The allegations are contained in an Ontario Provincial Police document sworn before a judge to get a production order for evidence, and was obtained by the Globe and Mail on Thursday.

The Globe and Mail report says OPP Det.-Const. Erin Thomas is quoted in the document as saying she “has reasonable grounds to believe and does believe” that the job offer to Andrew Olivier violates the criminal code.

Police cite section 125 (b), part of the code’s anti-corruption section, which prohibits “negotiating appointments.” The police allegations have not been tested in court, and no charges have been laid.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has denied that the Liberals made any specific offers to Olivier and has promised to co-operate with the police investigation.

Late last year Wynne asked Olivier, who ran for the Liberals in last year’s general election, not to seek the nomination for Thursday’s byelection because she wanted to appoint another candidate.

Olivier has alleged that the Liberals offered him a job or appointment in exchange for his stepping aside for Glenn Thibeault, who left his job as an NDP MP to run for the provincial Liberals.

Olivier, who is quadriplegic and records conversations in lieu of taking notes, posted audio to YouTube of his talks with two Liberals — Ontario Liberal campaign director Pat Sorbara and Gerry Lougheed, a Sudbury Liberal fundraiser.

In one of the recordings Olivier posted to YouTube, a man he identified as Lougheed says he is there on behalf of the premier to ask if he would consider stepping aside and nominating Thibeault, and telling Olivier they want to give him options “in terms of appointments, jobs or whatever.”

Olivier said Sorbara called him the next day and suggested Wynne had all but decided to appoint Thibeault as the candidate in favour of an open nomination race.

“We should have the broader discussion about what is it that you’d be most interested in doing, then decide what shape that could take that would fulfil that, is what I’m getting at, whether it’s a full-time or part-time job at a (constituency) office, whether it is appointments to boards or commissions, whether it is also going on the (party executive),” Sorbara is heard saying in the recording.

Wynne has said Olivier’s allegations are false, insisting that “there were no specific offers made in requests for any specific action” to Olivier.

The Liberals have said Olivier’s recordings vindicate them, as they were discussing ways Olivier could remain involved in the party or with accessibility work, but only after he was already told he wouldn’t be the candidate.

They also said Lougheed is neither a government nor Liberal staff member and speaks for himself.

In a statement to local media in December, Lougheed said that he does not have the authority to offer jobs and “at no time” did he promise Olivier a job or appointment if he stepped aside.

The opposition parties had asked the OPP to investigate Olivier’s allegations, suggesting they could contravene sections of the Criminal Code that relate to offering government advantages and securing appointments.

The OPP determined last month that no criminal offence was committed, but later reopen the investigation in light of Olivier’s audio.

A spokeswoman for Wynne said late Thursday that it is common for an investigator to make an assertion in order to obtain a warrant.

“It is in no way confirmation that an offense has occurred,” the spokeswoman said in an email.

Elections Ontario is also investigating and has interviewed both Wynne and Sorbara, after the New Democrats suggested the Liberals’ alleged conduct violates the Election Act.

The race has been overshadowed by criminal allegations against the Liberals and turncoat accusations aimed at their candidate.

Glenn Thibeault left the federal N-D-P to run for the provincial Liberals in the byelection, prompting federal Leader Tom Mulcair to call him untrustworthy and a turncoat.

The Liberals appointed Thibeault instead of holding a nomination contest and their previous candidate in the June general election alleges the party offered him a job or appointment in exchange for stepping aside.

The provincial police and Elections Ontario are investigating Andrew Olivier’s claims following complaints from the opposition parties.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne at a campaign event for then candidate Andrew Olivier (right) in Sudbury during the spring election campaign. She and her party operatives alter asked him to step aside for current candidate Glenn Thibeault. Olivier didn’t go quietly. (Frank Gunn/ Canadian Press)

Olivier is running as an independent, but polls suggest it’s a race between Thibeault and N-D-P candidate Suzanne Shawbonquit.

Olivier also released audio of his conversations with two Liberals, which he said back up his claims, but added he just wanted to focus on the issues in the campaign.

The Liberals have denied the bribery allegations, saying they were trying to keep Olivier involved in the party after Thibeault’s appointment was already decided.

The byelection was triggered when New Democrat Joe Cimino resigned after just five months on the job.

The Liberals had previously held the seat for 19 years, so with the former stronghold in play again, Wynne has showered attention on the riding. When she arrives in town today it will be her sixth visit since calling the byelection.

And, it seems voters are more engaged, with advance polls showing a higher turnout than advance polls in the general election.

]]>Elections actthecanadianpressOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne at a campaign event for then candidate Andrew Olivier (right) in Sudbury during the spring election campaign. Frank Gunn/ Canadian PressOPP seek recordings in Liberal byelection investigationhttp://o.canada.com/news/opp-seek-recordings-in-liberal-byelection-investigation
Wed, 04 Feb 2015 13:39:35 +0000https://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com?p=588620&preview_id=588620]]>TORONTO — Ontario’s provincial police have gone to court to seek recordings in an investigation into allegations the province’s Liberals broke the law during the selection of a candidate for the Sudbury byelection.

Premier Kathleen Wynne asked Andrew Olivier, the Liberals’ candidate in Sudbury in last June’s general election, not to seek the nomination for Thursday’s byelection because she had another candidate she wanted to appoint.

Olivier has alleged that the Liberals offered him a job or appointment in exchange for his stepping aside for Glenn Thibeault, who left his job as an NDP MP to run for the provincial Liberals.

Olivier, who is quadriplegic and records conversations in lieu of taking notes, posted audio to YouTube of his talks with two Liberals, including Ontario Liberal campaign director Pat Sorbara.

The Progressive Conservatives asked the OPP to investigate, believing the Liberals’ alleged actions could contravene sections of the Criminal Code that relate to offering government advantages and securing appointments.

After interviewing Olivier the police found no evidence to conclude a criminal offence had been committed. But after Olivier posted the audio online, the Tories asked the OPP to take another look.

“Mr. Olivier had the opportunity to voluntarily offer the recordings he had made at the time to the OPP, but he chose not to do so, then he released recordings with two individuals via social media after that,” said OPP Det.-Supt. Dave Truax.

“Subsequent to that we’ve reviewed the matter further and since that time have obtained a production order.”

New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault left the federal NDP to run for the provincial Liberals. In this 2011 file photo, he speaks at a press conference in Ottawa. [Sean Kilpatrick/ Canadian Press]

Elections Ontario is also investigating and has interviewed both Wynne and Sorbara, after the New Democrats suggested the Liberals’ alleged conduct violates the Election Act, which makes it an offence to promise a job or appointment to induce a person to withdraw their candidacy.

“The fact that Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario Liberal Party are under investigation by Elections Ontario and the OPP anti-rackets squad for attempted bribery speaks volumes about their arrogance, entitlement and cynical politicking,” NDP MPP Gilles Bisson said in a statement.

The Liberals say Olivier’s recordings vindicate them, as they were discussing ways Olivier could remain involved in the party or with accessibility work, but only after he was already told he wouldn’t be the candidate.

“We should have the broader discussion about what is it that you’d be most interested in doing, then decide what shape that could take that would fulfil that, is what I’m getting at, whether it’s a full-time or part-time job at a (constituency) office, whether it is appointments to boards or commissions, whether it is also going on the (party executive),” Sorbara said in the conversation.

Olivier is now running in the byelection as an independent.

The Sudbury seat was vacated in November by New Democrat Joe Cimino, who resigned after just five months. The seat was previously a long-held Liberal riding and Sorbara told Olivier the premier is desperate — “desperate in a good way” — to get it back.

The two met on the eve of the meeting, being held just a few blocks from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office, to discuss a host of issues.

Trudeau says Canadians want collaborative leadership from the federal government, and they believe there’s a real need for provincial, territorial and federal officials to work together.

He says he’s sat down with most premiers across the country to engage with them on an array of issues, and says Harper should be doing the same.

The Conservatives say Harper regularly has one-on-one meetings with the premiers.

Wynne is reiterating her belief that it would be better for the premiers to have an ongoing dialogue with the prime minister as a group. New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant also says it’s unfortunate Harper hasn’t met with the premiers as a group in years.

Earlier today, the Liberals tabled a motion in Parliament calling on Harper to meet annually with his provincial counterparts.

Andrew Olivier, the party’s candidate in last June’s general election, says he was asked by Premier Kathleen Wynne to step aside because she had another candidate in mind, which she later revealed to be NDP MP Glenn Thibeault.

Olivier says Liberal officials asked him not to seek the nomination and suggested a job or appointment could be arranged — accusations the Liberals have denied.

The Progressive Conservatives wrote to the OPP, asking them to investigate because they believed the alleged actions could contravene sections of the Criminal Code that relate to offering government advantages and securing appointments.

OPP spokesman Sgt. Peter Leon says the anti-rackets division reviewed the information and conducted interviews with the people involved and have concluded no criminal offence was committed.

The Sudbury byelection is set for Feb. 5 to replace New Democrat Joe Cimino, who surprised supporters by resigning for personal reasons after just five months on the job.

Thibeault will face off as the Liberal candidate against Olivier, who is running as an independent, Suzanne Shawbonquit, nominated over the weekend for the NDP, and Progressive Conservative candidate Paula Peroni.

The NDP has also asked Elections Ontario to investigate Olivier’s allegations, pointing to the Election Act, which makes it an offence to promise a job or appointment to induce a person to withdraw their candidacy.

“I’m confident that Elections Ontario will look into it and when they do they will come down on the (Liberals) and say, ‘You’re not allowed to do that,”‘ New Democrat Gilles Bisson said in an interview.

]]>Kathleen Wynne; Andrew Olivier; Ella ProsperithecanadianpressFormer Ontario Liberal candidate says party offered him job not to run for byelection nominationhttp://o.canada.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-candidate-says-party-offered-him-job-not-to-run-for-byelection-nomination
http://o.canada.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-candidate-says-party-offered-him-job-not-to-run-for-byelection-nomination#commentsMon, 15 Dec 2014 21:20:42 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=562686]]>A man who ran for the Ontario Liberal Party during the spring election claims the party offered him a job in exchange for him quietly ceding the nomination for an upcoming byelection.

Andrew Olivier was about 1,000 votes away from becoming Ontario’s first quadriplegic MPP when then-NDP candidate Joe Cimino beat him during the spring election. But less than five months later, Cimini unexpectedly resigned and now the northern riding of Sudbury is facing a byelection in early 2015.

Olivier had hoped to run again, but in a statement to the media Monday, he said he was asked not to by the party and was offered “a job or appointment” instead. Premier Kathleen Wynne denied Olivier was offered anything specific in a press conference Monday.

A lengthy statement Olivier posted to Facebook details a very different story, in which long-time Sudbury Liberal Gary Lougheed first discouraged Olivier from running, before Wynne called him herself. Then, the premier’s deputy chief of staff and head of Ontario Liberal campaigning efforts weighed in, Olivier claims.

When New Democrat Joe Cimino resigned his Queen’s Park seat just months after taking office, he sparked a pending byelection at the centre of controversy surrounding the Ontario Liberal Party nomination in the riding.

“The head of the Ontario Liberal Party campaign, Pat Sorbara, called me and reiterated suggestions of a job or appointment. I told Pat I had a job and that I wanted to seek the nomination to be Sudbury’s MPP,” Olivier wrote. “At that point, I was informed that if I sought the nomination, the Premier was prepared to bypass the nomination process, and appoint their chosen candidate.”

Sorbara flatly denied offering Olivier a job.

“I reached out to Andrew Olivier last week and discussed ways he could remain involved. Any suggestion that anything was offered in exchange for any action is categorically false. Just as the Premier said today, Andrew is a terrific person and I do sincerely hope he will stay involved,” she said in a statement.

Olivier had a different takeaway:

“My message is clear. I will not be bullied or bought,” Olivier said in a lengthy Facebook post.

At an unrelated press conference Monday, Wynne called Olivier a “terrific young man” she hopes will stay involved in politics. She said she only spoke to him when another, still unnamed, candidate became available to run who was able to during the spring election. The premier added Liberals reached out to Olivier so he knew they were looking at another candidate so he didn’t find out from other sources or the media.

“There were no specific offers of anything,” Wynne said. She later repeated that discussions were had to keep Olivier involved in the party, “but there were no specific commitments.”

The Ontario Liberal Party does not have a strict open nomination process. In fact, the party constitution gives the party leader the ability to appoint as many as five candidates during a general election. This is often used to increase diversity, but patronage and local politics can also factor in.

Both opposition parties want a formal investigation into the matter.

The Ontario Provincial Police have been kept busy by Queen’s Park: the force is still investigating the Ornge ambulance service and the allegations documents were destroyed by Liberal operatives to cover up the gas plant scandal.

PC house leader Steve Clark sent a letter to Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Vince Hawkes requesting an investigation. Clark wonders if the Liberals’ purported offer to Olivier constitute a violation of the Criminal Code restrictions on peddling influence under the “Corruption and Disobedience” sections of the law.

“I believe Ontarians deserve honesty and transparency from their elected officials and not to have them unduly influence the true democratic process,” Clark wrote. “The alleged actions truly disappoint me.”

“The allegation made by Mr. Olivier is deeply concerning. Mr. Olivier indicated that was being contacted on behalf of the Premier to offer him a job or appointment to induce him to refrain from becoming the Liberal candidate in the upcoming Sudbury by-election. As you know, this is a serious allegation, and a conviction carries a penalty of $25,000 and prison term of two years less a day,” Bisson said in a statement. “Ontarians deserve to know if this allegation is true, and if so, who ordered Mr. Lougheed and Ms. Sorbara to offer Mr. Olivier a ‘job or appointment’ in exchange for his withdrawal from the Liberal nomination race.”

Read Olivier’s full Facebook statement:

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/former-ontario-liberal-candidate-says-party-offered-him-job-not-to-run-for-byelection-nomination/feed4Kathleen Wynne; Andrew Olivier; Ella ProsperiashleycsanadyWhen New Democrat Joe Cimino resigned his Queen's Park seat just months after taking office, he sparked a pending byelection at the centre of controversy surrounding the Ontario Liberal Party nomination in the riding. The Ontario Provincial Police are still investigating the Ornge ambulance service and the allegations documents were destroyed by Liberal operatives to cover up the gas plant scandal. Liberals decision to reopen teachers contracts cost Ontario $468M: Auditorhttp://o.canada.com/news/liberals-decision-to-reopen-teachers-contracts-cost-ontario-468m-auditor
Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:11:01 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com?p=547804&preview_id=547804]]>By Keith Leslie

The Liberals hoped to save $2.4 billion when they passed legislation in Sept. 2012 to freeze teachers’ pay for two years and reduce banked sick days and pension benefits, but the auditor found they gave some of the savings back to the unions.

“The savings were reduced as a result of subsequent discussions,” said Lysyk.

Of the total cost, $200 million went toward giving teachers and school board workers more paid sick days, hiring more substitute teachers to cover the sick days and changing the eligibility threshold for retirement benefits, she said.

It cost another $155 million to reduce the number of unpaid professional activity days, give teachers one day’s pay if they take fewer than six sick days a year, improve maternity benefits and compensate school boards for increased expenses because of the new deals.

And it cost another $113 million to eliminate wage differences between teachers’ unions, which have so-called “me too” clauses so every group benefits when one negotiates a new or increased benefit, added Lysyk.

“So if you add the $200 million, the $155 and the $113, that is the total for the additional costs,” she told reporters.

Wynne was not available for comment on the auditor’s report even though she was in question period and attended a cabinet meeting at the legislature Wednesday.

Education Minister Liz Sandals refused to comment on the additional costs for the decision to reopen the teachers’ deals, and ended up walking away from reporters.

“I am absolutely delighted that we have a new way of doing collective bargaining,” Sandals said repeatedly. “We saved what I said we would save.”

Public school teachers withdrew from extracurricular activities and staged protests after the Liberals legislated the two-year wage freeze, and blocked the streets outside Maple Leaf Gardens during the Liberal leadership vote in Jan. 2013.

Wynne knew the Liberals needed to get the teachers back on side before the spring election and so she reopened their contracts to appease them, said Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod.

“This information would have been better in the hands of moms and dads before the election, but it wasn’t,” said MacLeod. “Today parents are learning that $500 million that should have been intended for kids in classrooms went to renegotiate contracts so that Kathleen Wynne would be more popular.”

MacLeod said she felt vindicated but not happy that the auditor confirmed the extra costs for the move to reopen the teachers’ contracts and accused Wynne of trying to buy labour peace.

The New Democrats said the Liberals created a huge mess by violating the Constitution when they legislated the teachers’ pay freeze, and warned that could result in a hefty legal bill for the government because of a court challenge.

“They broke open collective agreements, they took money that they shouldn’t have taken and they caused turmoil in our schools,” said NDP education critic Peter Tabuns. “The government wrote the law for its own convenience and students, parents and teachers have to deal with the fallout.”

The auditor said the new deals with teachers, which reduced their ability to bank sick days and cash them out at retirement, would save about $2.1 billion, but warned about the unknown costs of the teachers’ court challenge of the wage freeze bill.

“We’re saying that there’s $2 billion in savings, but depending on what the courts decide in that situation, it would have an impact on this if there was a ruling against the government,” Lysyk said.

On Tuesday, Sandals admitted the Liberals would cut the education budget by half a billion dollars over the next three years to help eliminate the $12.5-billion deficit, suggesting hundreds of schools with low enrolment would be shut down.

Follow â†*CPnewsboy on Twitter

16:10ET 19-11-14

]]>TEachers protest 20120828thecanadianpressCoyne: NDP childcare plan may be better politics than policyhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/coyne-ndp-child-care-plan-may-be-better-politics-than-policy
http://o.canada.com/news/national/coyne-ndp-child-care-plan-may-be-better-politics-than-policy#respondWed, 15 Oct 2014 23:59:09 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=529557]]>There are three ways to look at the NDP’s proposed new national childcare plan: as a contribution to debate, as policy, and as political strategy.

The plan is ambitious, yet serious, costed, and backed by much research and expert opinion. It is the second major proposal for an expanded welfare state to emerge of late, along with the Ontario Liberals’ provincial pension plan. As such, it deserves praise as an important contribution to the national debate, of a kind the free-market right has largely given up on. Across the country, it is the political left that is now setting the agenda while the right, complacent in power and cowering in opposition, has nothing more ambitious to propose than variations on more of the same.

That does not, however, make it good public policy. Cost is the least troubling objection: At a projected $1.9 billion annually after four years, it would cost rather less than the $2-billion-plus expansion of the Universal Child Care Benefit the Conservatives are reportedly about to announce. (The existing UCCB, which sends $100 a month to parents with children under six years old — and which the NDP says it would keep — costs about $2.7 billion a year. I’m guesstimating expanding it to children aged 6 to 12, as the National Post’s John Ivison has reported is in the works, would cost about the same.)

As has become the custom in Canadian politics, however, the NDP plan involves a commitment to spend money on other governments’ behalf — that is, the 40 per cent of the cost the provinces would be expected to cough up. It is far from clear the provinces, most of them in deficit and all of them struggling with the ever-mounting costs of health care, would be as keen as the NDP suggests to take on this new obligation.

The NDP leader, Tom Mulcair, says the plan “will pay for itself,” citing studies of the Quebec program on which it is modelled that show increased labour-force participation by women (hence higher tax revenues). Oddly, the government of Quebec does not see it that way. It is considering how to trim back the cost of its famous $7 a day plan, perhaps by charging more to parents on higher incomes. The NDP plan, to be fair, is not quite as generous: It sets a “goal” of charging parents no more than $15 a day per child, roughly a third of what parents in much of the country are now paying for regulated, licensed care.

Ah, but should that be the objective? Should all of those public funds go to subsidizing the price of one particular model of care? The assumption behind the NDP plan is that every child should be in a formal daycare centre: regulated, licensed, preferably non-profit, ideally unionized. But notwithstanding decades of proselytizing on this score, not every parent — maybe not even most — wants this. While some who now entrust their children to more informal arrangements — relatives, babysitters, or indeed staying home to look after them themselves — would no doubt prefer NDP-style care, many more would not.

Youngsters play as NDP Leader Tom Mulcair holds a press conference at a daycare in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

This remains the heart of the debate. There is a strong case for subsidizing the cost of child care, particularly for single or low-income parents, to help them escape the catch-22 they would otherwise be in: unable to take a job because they cannot afford care, unable to pay for care because they have no job. But the subsidy need not be sent to the daycare provider (or, as the NDP proposes, to the provinces, for distribution from there) to have the desired effect. It can be sent directly to parents, to be allocated to the provider of their choice.

As playwright George Bernard Shaw said, money “enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.” The only way to take advantage of the NDP plan is to enrol your kids in the kinds of care they think best. Not only does not every parent want to do this: not every parent can. You have to get your kids to the centre on the centre’s hours, for starters, which leaves out those working the night shift. Whereas a cash-based system helps no matter which form of care is chosen. Which is why the NDP plan would benefit only the children in the 370,000 spaces it would eventually create, while for about the same money the UCCB benefits more than two million children now.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asks a question during question period in the House of Commons. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

It’s true the Quebec program has helped many women to enter the labour force — but that was a function of the subsidy, not the particular means of delivering it. Moreover, the evidence suggests that, contrary to the claims made for it, it disproportionately benefits the well-to-do: take-up rates are more than twice as high among those in the top quartile, according to a study by economists at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, as among those at the bottom. (I am indebted to the economist Stephen Gordon for pointing this out.) This is a common failing wherever benefits are distributed in kind, rather than in cash. The better-off prove to be rather better at getting to the front of the line.

Whatever its defects as policy, however, the NDP plan has the signal political advantage of putting the Liberals on the spot. The NDP is intent these days on highlighting their differences with the Liberals, forcing them to compete for the left-wing vote rather than straddling the vague centre. Having promised but failed to deliver similar plans in the past, the Liberals are vulnerable. Yet if they do follow the NDP’s lead, they risk alienating right-of-centre voters, the ones they lost to the Conservatives in 2006, many of them over just this issue.

To govern, it is said, is to choose. So is it, the Liberals are about to learn, to oppose.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/coyne-ndp-child-care-plan-may-be-better-politics-than-policy/feed0Thomas MulcairandrewcoyneYoungsters play as NDP Leader Tom Mulcair holds a press conference at a daycare in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickNDP Leader Tom Mulcair asks a question during question period in the House of Commons. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickSeverance payments for axed Pan Am executives cost over $500Khttp://o.canada.com/sports/severance-payments-for-axed-pan-am-executives-cost-over-500k
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 20:25:35 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=520084]]>By Allison Jones

TORONTO — The dismissal of two Pan Am Games executives will cost Ontario taxpayers more than half a million dollars.

Elaine Roper was let go as senior vice-president of human resources earlier this year and will receive a severance payment of $301,451.

Louise Lutgens was dismissed at the same time as senior vice-president of community and cultural affairs and will receive a severance payment of $271,180.91.

A spokeswoman for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games said in a news release that the settlements follow terms in the former executives’ contracts.

Other settlement costs include legal fees of $3,500 for each case, outplacement payments of $10,000 for each, deferred retirement benefits including an RRSP of $14,023.96 for Lutgens and $16,730 for Roper, as well as medical and health benefits through the severance period of about $3,500 for each.

The two executives were let go in March, when the games announced “streamlining” measures, and CEO Saad Rafi said Friday in a statement that those changes are going to mean that about $1.5 million that would have gone to compensation will instead go to frontline operations.

In this file photo, Nathan Phillips Square is filled with people during the celebrations for the one year countdown to the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am games. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

When former CEO Ian Troop was fired late last year, he got a cash severance payment of $478,200 plus $27,300 in retirement benefits. The dismissal also cost taxpayers $10,000 in outplacement payments, $3,500 in legal fees and medical benefits of $15,800.

At the time, the Pan Am board gave no reason for Troop’s departure, but sources said there were key operational issues that were not being decided, creating a schism between the organizers and the Ontario government.

There was also an outcry from the opposition parties when Troop, who was paid $477,000 a year, billed taxpayers 91 cents for parking, $1.89 for a cup of tea and $8,561.19 for a Mexican hotel and cocktail party.

In July, TO2015 said it had spent $126.9 million, about 15.7 per cent of its total operations budget of $810 million. It also reported $23,136 in travel and hospital expenses since July 2013.

The Liberals have also been criticized for the cost of security for the Games, admitting that the original $113 million built into the Pan Am budget was just a best guess and it may climb above the latest estimate of $239 million.

TO2015 said it couldn’t provide the latest figures, saying it was in the hands of the Pan/Parapan Am Games Integrated Security Unit.

The total budget for the Games, including security, transportation and the athletes village is currently estimated at $2.5 billion.

TORONTO — Doctors are expected to provide an update on ailing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s health Wednesday, his brother said Tuesday as speculation continues to swirl about the gravity of the controversial mayor’s condition.

The news conference will take place at Mount Sinai Hospital where Ford is undergoing tests after a tumour was discovered in his abdomen last week, Coun. Doug Ford said as he entered the facility.

He announced he was running for mayor last Friday after his brother withdrew his bid due to his health. However, Rob Ford is running for councillor in the west Toronto ward he represented for a decade before he was elected mayor in 2010.

The mayor was hospitalized last Wednesday after complaining of unbearable abdominal pain and doctors discovered a “fair sized” tumour. They did a biopsy, saying it would be about a week before they knew whether the tumour was cancerous.

Asked by reporters if his younger brother had received the test results, a grim-faced Doug Ford said a doctor would talk about it on Wednesday.

A hand is rested on Diane Ford’s shoulder as her son, Doug Ford speaks to the media outside his mother’s Etobicoke home on Friday September 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)

He was also tight-lipped about whether he would postpone his mayoral campaign. Earlier in the day, a spokesman said no campaign events had been planned yet.

“I just want to get over this hump on Wednesday, then we’ll go from there,” Doug Ford said.

Recent events have been “extremely tough” for the entire family, he said. The Ford patriarch, former Ontario politician and businessman Doug Ford Sr., died of colon cancer in 2006 just a few months after being diagnosed.

“Our family’s strong, Rob’s strong and with all the support of the people, that’s what keeps us going,” Ford said.

His brother and their family were grateful for the outpouring of support from the public and wanted to “reach out” to other people who are facing the same troubles, he said.

“It’s not just about Rob Ford, it’s the tens of thousands of families that are going through this, and so many families have met here,” Ford said.

“It’s heart-wrenching. But we just want to give our hearts and prayers to them as well. I appreciate everyone’s support.”

“I hope Rob Ford can beat his health issues,” she said at an event near Barrie, Ont. “I hope that he can be well and my thoughts are with him and his family.”

But she didn’t comment on his brother’s decision to join the mayoral race. The provincial Liberals have mostly stayed away from the controversies surrounding Ford, saying his conduct should be dealt with at city council.

Ford returned just a few months ago from a stint in rehab after a second video surfaced showing him allegedly smoking crack cocaine, an audio recording of him making lewd comments about a female mayoral candidate and witness accounts of him snorting cocaine at a city nightclub.

It was another stunning chapter in a scandal-plagued year in which Ford was forced to admit to using crack cocaine in a “drunken stupor,” became the target of a police investigation and was stripped of almost all of his mayoral powers by city council.

His tribulations garnered headlines around the world, with Ford becoming the butt of jokes on late-night television shows.

Wynne gently scolded reporters who asked who she intends to vote for as mayor of Toronto, where she lives.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” she said with a chuckle. “We have a secret ballot.”

She also declined to comment about Liberal MPPs endorsing former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, the leading candidate for Rob Ford’s job.

Interim Tory Leader Jim Wilson said the Liberals are clearly getting behind Tory, saying if he were one of the other candidates he’d be miffed.

Wynne said the province will need to work with the municipal leaders who will be elected this fall in 444 communities across the province, so she’s remaining neutral in the elections.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she stays out of the “endorsement game,” but hopes what she calls progressive candidates are elected across Ontario.

— with files from Allison Jones in Ivy, Ont.

]]>DFordPresser_LKP_009.JPGthecanadianpressA hand is rested on Diane Ford's shoulder as her son, Doug Ford speaks to the media outside his mother's Etobicoke home on Friday September 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)This March 3, 2014 image released by ABC shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, left, having his forehead wiped by host Jimmy Kimmel on the late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live," in Los Angeles. Time to scrap Ontario’s booze monopoly, report sayshttp://o.canada.com/news/time-to-scrap-ontarios-booze-monopoly-report-says
Wed, 20 Aug 2014 12:01:13 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=501908]]>TORONTO — Ontario could reap more money from booze sales and consumers could pay less for alcohol if the provincial government opened up the business to more retailers, a new report found.

The study, released Wednesday by the C.D. Howe Institute, said the government is actually foregoing revenue by preserving its virtual monopoly on the sale of alcohol.

Western provinces with more competition had seven per cent more per capita in provincial alcohol profits than those with government-run monopolies, according to the report written by two economists.

It recommends that Ontario allow wine and beer sales in grocery and convenience stores, permit beer to be sold by other retail outlets and grant licences for off-winery stores to wineries and to new wine retailers.

“These changes would increase the choices available and reduce prices for Ontario consumers, as well as improve the competitiveness of Ontario’s smaller wineries and breweries and generate more revenue for the government,” it said.

Ontario is the only jurisdiction in North America that limits off-site liquor sales to a chain of government stores, a single private beer retailer and a fixed number of off-winery wine stores, the report said.

The publicly owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which pours about $2.5 billion into provincial and federal coffers each year, sells hard liquor as well as beer and wine.

The Beer Store, run by three foreign-owned brewers, also has a quasi-monopoly of beer sales and retail distribution. It generates about $1 billion for the province in taxes.

The high costs of the LCBO — including salaries and benefits for employees — are unlikely to shrink without more competition, the report said.

There’s also little incentive for The Beer Store to lower prices to consumers and commercial establishments, provide better service or give more shelf space to competing brands since it commands about 77.5 per cent of beer sales in the province, it said.

Two large vintners — including one owned by U.S.-based Constellation Brands — can sell Ontario-blended wine in retail stores the Wine Shop and the Wine Rack, but can’t undercut LCBO prices. Other wineries, as well as distilleries and brewers, are only able to sell their wares through the LCBO or on site.

That gives the two big wineries a lot more retail shelf space than the other vintners, said Derek Saunders, who co-founded the Calamus Estate Winery near Beamsville, Ont.

There’s also pressure to reduce prices for the premium wine they produce because the LCBO can buy cheaper wines that are popular with their customers from other sources in Chile or elsewhere, he said.

The government should allow wine to be sold in private stores, Saunders said.

“There’s nobody in government bold enough to make a change that will help this industry,” he said in a recent interview.

“And I repeat: this industry will collapse under the current system because we just can’t sell our wine. We can’t get it to the people.”

Finance Minister Charles Sousa was unavailable for comment, but his spokeswoman said Ontarians are well-served by the current system.

“Last year, the LCBO generated $1.74 billion in transfers to the province, the twentieth consecutive year the agency has increased its dividend to the province,” Susie Heath said in an email.

“This is important funding that supports vital services for all Ontarians, such as health care and education.”

She noted that Ontario wines can now be sold at local farmer’s markets and that a small number of LCBO boutiques are being set up in grocery stores. But the governing Liberals have steadfastly refused to open up sales of wine and beer in the vast majority of grocery stores and convenience stores.

“The strength of the LCBO model is in a balance between customer convenience and selling alcohol in a socially responsible manner,” Heath said.

The report’s authors note that rather than discouraging alcohol sales, the LCBO publishes brochures touting various wines, beers and spirits. The Liberals had a committee look at alcohol retailing in 2005, but didn’t act on their recommendations to open the sector to private competition.

“The quasi-monopoly enjoyed by the LCBO and TBS imposes excessive costs on consumers, restricts their menu of choices, and limits the accessibility of stores selling retailing alcohol,” the report said.

“In addition, it imposes distortions on small domestic breweries and wineries and puts them at a competitive disadvantage relative to a few large Canadian and foreign producers.”

Other provinces have moved away from monopolies, the report said. Quebec allows wine and beer sales in grocery and convenience stores, British Columbia will allow liquor sales in grocery stores next year and Alberta privatized the sale of alcohol 20 years ago.

Almost all retail alcohol in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba is sold in government-run stores, the report said. But Manitoba and Saskatchewan allow take-away beer sales in licensed hotels and Saskatchewan said it will allow a limited number of privately held stores to sell booze.

Convenience stores as well as those belonging to a government-owned corporation can sell beer in Newfoundland and Labrador. The provincial stores also sell wine and spirits.

The Ontario provincial government on Thursday announced plans for a revitalized waterfront area that will include waterfront stores and restaurants, more public space and a “celebration common” for festivals and musical events. Two iconic parts of Ontario Place will also continue on: the Cinesphere IMAX movie theatre and the “pods” that rise up out of Lake Ontario.

According to Ontario’s tourism minister Michael Coteau, the first phase of the project will be completed by 2016. The provincial government released a series of conceptual images of the renewed Ontario Place Thursday showing a bustling waterfront full of walking paths, canals and greenery.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals talked about revitalizing the space during the provincial election campaign, with Wynne pledging no condos would be built there.
Ontario Place opened in May 1971, but was closed in 2012 as the number of visitors dwindled and the province, struggling to rein in a $15-billion deficit, said it could no longer afford to keep it open.

TORONTO — Construction of six venues for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Games is running behind schedule, including a new Hamilton stadium, a key venue that’s now expected to be finished in September.

The $145.7-million Tim Hortons Field was slated to open this month, a year before it was to host all 32 men’s and women’s soccer competitions. The delay has forced the Hamilton Tiger-Cats football team to use a smaller facility for the first two home games of the season.

Completion dates for the Toronto track and field centre, a facility in Markham, the equestrian park in Caledon and the shooting centre in Cookstown have all been pushed back by a month or two.

The ballpark in Ajax was supposed to be completed by July, but phase two of the project is now expected to be finished in November. However, all the projects are expected to be done well before the Games begin next July.

“We had a significantly difficult winter this past go-around, and I think you would understand the ball park being a challenge when you’re trying to put a playing field in when you’ve got frozen ground,” said Murray Noble, TO2015’s senior vice-president of infrastructure.

“So some of those projects were truly to do with the weather.”

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks during the celebrations for the one year countdown to the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am games at Nathan Phillips Square Toronto, Ontario on Friday, July 11, 2014. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)

The final phase of the Caledon equestrian park was pushed back from December 2014 to February 2015 to make it easier for the right contractors to bid on it, he added.

“All of our projects continue to be tracking very well for completion before the end of the year here, and certainly well within the time frames before the Games,” he said.

Noble said he couldn’t provide an exact date for the completion of the Hamilton stadium, saying the question should be directed to Infrastructure Ontario.

Ontario’s governing Liberals have been under fire for the stadium setback, but say taxpayers won’t be on the hook for any cost overruns.

But the Ticats are taking a financial hit for every game they can’t play in the new stadium, said New Democrat Paul Miller, who represents a Hamilton riding.

The team will have to use Roy Joyce Stadium at McMaster University, which has 6,000 permanent seats and temporary seating for another 6,000.

Tim Hortons Field would have 22,500 permanent seats and a potential capacity of 40,000 through temporary seating.

“Who’s going to cover that cost?” said Miller. “The city of Hamilton? Infrastructure Ontario? The Pan Am committee?”

TO2015 said Friday that the overall capital building program for the Games continues to stay in line with their budget.

It spent $92.8 million in the quarter ending March 31, including $66 million on venue construction during the three months ending March 31, the organizing committee said in its fourth-quarter financial report.

Venue construction spending is $387 million so far, about 53 per cent of the total original capital budget of $730 million, it said.

It includes $83.5 million for the Hamilton stadium, $148.4 million for an aquatics and field house and $24.8 million on an athletics stadium in Toronto and $53.9 million for the Markham centre, which will host badminton, table tennis and water polo competitions.

Operating expenses during the quarter were $26.8 million, mostly spent in the areas of corporate, technology, transportation, events and ceremonies and community and cultural affairs, it said.

Corporations have also put in an “incremental $43 million in value” worth of in-kind sponsorships for delivery of the Games, the committee said.

TO2015 said it has spent $126.9 million to date, about 15.7 per cent of its total operations budget of $810 million.

It reported $4,159 in travel and hospitality expenses for the quarter, bringing the total since last July to $23,136.

Saad Rafi, TO2015’s chief executive officer, said the Games are expected to create 26,000 job and 84 per cent of the funding spent to procure goods and services has gone to Canadian companies.

The Games will take place at 34 different competition venues across the Golden Horseshoe, from Niagara in the south to Orillia in the north, running from July 7 to 26, followed by the Parapan Am Games Aug. 7 to 15.

The Liberals have also been criticized for the cost of security for the Games, admitting that the original $113 million built into the Pan Am budget was just a best guess and it may climb above the latest estimate of $239 million.

TO2015 said it couldn’t provide the latest figures, saying it was in the hands of the Pan/Parapan Am Games Integrated Security Unit.

The report glosses over the construction delays, inflates the number of jobs that will be created and doesn’t mention the amount of money that will be spent on security or transportation, Miller said.

“Every time (the Liberals) talk about it, they talk about the positive side of it,” Miller said. “And that’s fine, but they don’t talk about the hidden negative side and they don’t want the public to know that.”

The total budget for the Games, including security, transportation and the athletes village is currently estimated at $2.5 billion.

]]>PanAmGames_LKP_024.JPGthecanadianpressOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks during the celebrations for the one year countdown to the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am games at Nathan Phillips Square Toronto, Ontario on Friday, July 11, 2014. (Laura Pedersen/National Post) Video appearing to show shark in Lake Ontario a hoax, Bell Media admitshttp://o.canada.com/news/video-appearing-to-show-shark-in-lake-ontario-a-hoax-bell-media-admits
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:49:45 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=485818]]>TORONTO — An island community on Lake Ontario expressed a mix of relief and frustration Wednesday after a video which had many wondering if a shark was lurking nearby turned out to be an elaborate marketing ploy.

The clip made waves across the province and beyond, with many offering opinions on what they were seeing, although experts agreed the creature on camera wasn’t a fresh-water-friendly bull shark but likely a large catfish.

The matter even came up at Ontario’s legislature, where the governing Liberals cheekily noted there was no need to strike a Jaws-like task force, but asked residents to stay safe and report any sightings to the Natural Resources Ministry.

It was only on Wednesday afternoon that Discovery Canada, which is owned by broadcasting giant Bell Media, said a finned creature which momentarily surfaced while three men fished off a dock was in fact a life-like prosthetic model of a shark.

The channel said the video — which was posted on YouTube July 10 — was the first stage of a marketing campaign to promote an upcoming series on sharks.

But for local residents on Wolfe Island, where the video was supposed to have been filmed, the entire matter was one that set some on edge.

For Kody Paul, the matter was something he had to discuss with his two young boys over the past week.

“Our kids grow up swimming in these waters,” he said. “It certainly switched up the atmosphere around here.”

Finding out the video was in fact a stunt came as a surprise, and ultimately a relief.

“It was a little bit offputting,” said Paul. “We’re choosing not to get too upset about it.”

Wolfe Island Mayor Denis Doyle, who took numerous calls on the matter, said the stunt was perturbing.

“It’s rather concerning that people do those kind of dumb things,” he said, upon learning the clip was a hoax.

Those behind the fake video said they decided to come clean after seeing the frenzy of speculation sparked by the clip.

“The intent isn’t to mislead or to frighten people. As soon as we started hearing stories about people were talking about not getting in the water, that’s exactly when we decided to act,” said Discovery Canada president Paul Lewis.

“The intent really was simply to stir up some discussion.”

Lewis said the original plan had been to let the clip sit online for several weeks ahead of the series it was linked to.

“It all happened so fast,” he said, adding that none of Bell Media’s new channels were notified of the hoax ahead of it being revealed.

“The possibility that there’s one shark in Lake Ontario would cause that sort of concern and consternation I think to me shows that there’s still a lot of education to be done about sharks.”

Lewis added that the channel had not, to his knowledge, communicated with anyone on Wolfe Island about the stunt but was happy to do so.

“There was no anticipation on our side to cause any kind of fear or upset at all,” he said. “It was really a fun summer stunt that we thought people would engage with.”

OTTAWA — Monday’s four federal byelections made one thing clear: Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have momentum on their side.

The Liberals stole one riding — the coveted Trinity-Spadina in downtown Toronto — from the NDP, easily held another Toronto riding and gave the Conservatives a run for their money in the Tory bastion of Fort McMurray-Athabasca, in Alberta’s oilsands heartland.

The Conservatives handily retained another Alberta riding, Macleod, but even there, Liberal support almost quadrupled.

The results reflect just how far the Liberals, reduced to a third-party rump in 2011, have bounced back in the year since Trudeau took the helm, increasing their share of the vote in all four ridings over 2011 — dramatically so in three of them.

Conservatives and New Democrats, on the other hand, lost vote share in all four.

The biggest coup for Trudeau was snatching Trinity-Spadina from the NDP, a seat held since 2006 by Olivia Chow, widow of beloved former NDP leader Jack Layton.

Star Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, a popular former city councillor, bested the NDP’s Joe Cressy by some 20 percentage points in the only riding where the New Democrats were a factor.

The win is a big boost for the Liberals in their battle with the NDP over which opposition party is best positioned to replace Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in next year’s general election.

Voters in Toronto “have sent a clear message that the Liberal party is the only progressive alternative to Stephen Harper,” Trudeau crowed in a written statement as the results became clear.

It could also be a portent of things to come in 2015. Trinity-Spadina has always been something of a bellwether: when the Liberals have won the riding in the past, they’ve won power nationally; when the NDP has won the riding, the Conservatives have taken power.

However, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair reminded disappointed New Democrats that Trinity-Spadina will not exist in the 2015 election. Due to redistribution, the riding will be divvied up among three new constituencies.

“The work you did now is in the bank,” Mulcair told party faithful at Cressy’s campaign party. “In 15 months … we’ll see you back here.”

Mike Layton, city councillor and son of the late NDP leader, reminded Cressy supporters that the riding has swung between Liberals and New Democrats for decades, and that even Chow lost in her first two attempts.

“Well folks, we’ve been here before, we’ve been up against these mountains and we’ve conquered them before,” Layton said.

The Liberals hung on Monday to another Toronto riding, Scarborough-Agincourt, where the Conservatives tried to appeal to the conservative values of the ethnically diverse suburban population with attacks on Trudeau’s support for legalization of marijuana.

The riding had long been the personal fiefdom of Jim Karygiannis, a bare-knuckle political brawler who held the seat for the Liberals for 25 years before quitting to run municipally. His departure gave Conservatives hope they could score an upset.

But in the end, Liberal Arnold Chan, a lawyer and former political aide, actually increased his party’s share of the vote to almost 60 per cent –up about 15 points from 2011 and some 30 points ahead of Conservative Trevor Ellis.

Chan called his victory a repudiation of the Conservative party’s “negative attacks” on Trudeau, accusing it of trying to suppress votes by scheduling the byelections for the day before Canada Day, when many voters were taking an extended weekend.

Turnout was actually highest in Trinity-Spadina, at just over 30 per cent, and Scarborough-Agincourt, where it fell just shy of the same mark. Less than 19 per cent of eligible voters turned out in Macleod and only 15 per cent in Fort McMurray.

In Fort McMurray, the Liberals surged from a meagre 10 per cent of the vote in 2011 to more than 35 per cent — enough to put a scare into the Conservatives, if not defeat them.

David Yurdiga, former reeve and Athabasca county councillor, captured about 47 per cent of the vote to hold the seat for the governing party, besting Liberal Kyle Harrietha by roughly 12 percentage points. But the Tory share of the vote was still down significantly from the 72 per cent it won in 2011.

The surge in Liberal support in Fort McMurray suggests Trudeau is managing to turn around perceptions of his party in Alberta — a political wasteland for the Grits since Trudeau’s late father, Pierre, imposed the reviled national energy program more than three decades ago.

“Huge numbers of Liberals that we’d never before seen came out and sent a very, very clear message: that Albertans are tired of being taken for granted and are looking very closely at the 2015 election,” Trudeau told party faithful at Vaughan’s victory party.

In the southern part of the province, former newspaper editor John Barlow held Macleod for the Conservatives. He captured about 69 per cent of the vote — more than 50 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Liberal Dustin Fuller.

Still, even in Macleod, the Tory vote share was down about 10 points from 2011 while the Liberal share almost quadrupled.

“This is the culmination of eight months of hard work and it definitely feels worthwhile today,” Barlow said in a victory speech that came just 30 minutes after the polls closed.

More than 100 supporters cheered loudly when he entered the Italian restaurant in High River, accompanied by his wife Louise and children.

“What this really came down to was passion and how hard we worked. The message we had is Macleod is not going to be forgotten. We cannot take Macleod for granted.”

Barlow said he intends to locate his constituency office in High River, which has been decimated since massive floods last year turned the town’s streets into rivers of water.

“If there’s one issue that really bound Macleod together over the past year was that flood,” he said.

“We have a lot of work to do and I will be here from this day forward to make sure that work gets done.”

— With files from Bill Graveland in High River, Alta., and Alexandra Bosanac, Ethan Lou and Anne-Marie Vettorel in Toronto.

——

Follow @jmbryden on Twitter

01:22ET 01-07-14

]]>Adam Vaughan; Joe Cressy; Justin TrudeauthecanadianpressAcademics predict turnout collapse in byelection votes held Monday before Canada Dayhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/academics-predict-turnout-collapse-in-byelection-votes-held-monday-before-canada-day
Sat, 28 Jun 2014 21:30:50 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=475305]]>CALGARY — Polls are open in four federal ridings Monday, the day before the Canada Day holiday, and two political scientists based in Alberta say turnout could be low in some of the votes, even by byelection standards.

“It could be that voter turnout collapses,” says David Taras a political scientist from Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“Even by the standard of a normal byelection where voter turnout is traditionally not very high — this could be less. I think the Tories are basically saying let’s get this over with.”

With the July 1 holiday falling on a Tuesday this year, many Canadians are probably sneaking an extra day off for a four-day weekend in the mountains or at the lake.

Paul Fairie from the University of Calgary says picking a new member of Parliament may not be top of mind, especially with the Liberals expected to win Scarborough-Agincourt in the Toronto area and the governing Conservatives expected to take the Alberta seats of Macleod and Fort McMurray-Athabasca.

Only the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina is really up for grabs between the Liberals and the NDP, Fairie predicts.

He notes byelection turnout is always about 20 per cent below normal and he anticipates turnout in Monday could be 20 to 30 per cent lower than that.

“For the Conservatives, it’s a low-interest, low-stakes kind of venture. There are more interesting things to think about in the summer than a byelection.”

Taras agrees.

“There’s really nothing at stake for the Tories in this. They have two safe seats and the other two are really just opposition seats where they have no hope.

“So it doesn’t matter whether it’s June 30 or July 30 or September 30. The Tories have very little at stake.”

The Alberta riding of Fort McMurray-Athabasca was vacated by Conservative MP Brian Jean, who stepped down in January, citing a desire to spend more time with his family.

Conservative MP Ted Menzies resigned his southern Alberta seat of Macleod last November to become president and chief executive officer of CropLife Canada, an agriculture trade association.

In suburban Scarborough-Agincourt, Liberal stalwart Jim Karygiannis stepped down to run for a seat on Toronto city council in a ward that overlaps much of the federal riding.

Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina became vacant when New Democrat Olivia Chow, widow of former federal NDP leader Jack Layton, resigned to challenge Rob Ford for the mayor’s job.

TORONTO — Premier Kathleen Wynne will be giving her finance minister an extra hand to work on one of the governing Liberals’ most important files: creating a made-in-Ontario pension plan, The Canadian Press has learned.

Newcomer Mitzie Hunter will be named associate minister of finance responsible for the proposed Ontario Retirement Pension Plan when Wynne unveils her new cabinet Tuesday, a position that will help the Liberals roll it out by 2017, a source said.

Hunter, who was first elected last August, will be working with the government-appointed advisory panel to set up the plan, which includes former prime minister Paul Martin and Michael Nobrega, former CEO of OMERS.

She previously served as parliamentary assistant to the minister of community and social services and introduced a private member’s bill in the past legislative session that would allow ranked ballots in Toronto municipal elections, beginning in 2018.

Hunter served as CEO of the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance before entering provincial politics.

Her job is among the new kinds of positions that will be created within the 27-member cabinet. But Wynne has said that newly elected Liberals — who have yet to be sworn in as MPPs — won’t be among them.

Charles Sousa is staying on as finance minister and Liz Sandals is expected to remain in her role as education minister, the source said.

But the massive health portfolio will change hands. Eric Hoskins will take over as health minister while veteran Deb Matthews, who also serves as deputy premier, will switch to treasury board. Matthews has been health minister since 2009.

Wynne will lighten her own load by shedding her role as minister of agriculture and food but will keep her job as minister of intergovernmental affairs.

The newly elected premier is still chairwoman of the Council of the Federation until August and is pressing the federal Conservatives to provide more financial support to Ontario.

A recent report by the parliamentary budget officer shows Ottawa is shortchanging the province $1.2 billion under the current system of equalization payments — a longstanding complaint of Ontario premiers.

Wynne also wants federal funds to help develop the Ring of Fire mineral deposit and build transit infrastructure.

She has castigated Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not expanding the Canada Pension Plan, which spurred efforts to create a provincial plan.

Even before the June 12 election was called, Wynne complained that Harper’s antipathy toward pension reform was “offensive and inexplicable,” repeating it often during the campaign.

It infuriated Treasury Board president Tony Clement, who called the Ontario pension plan a “huge tax grab” and publicly announced he wanted Wynne to be drummed out of office by voters.

Instead, they gave her Liberals a majority of seats in the legislature, ensuring that the May 1 budget that included the pension proposal will pass.

Wynne plans to reopen the legislature July 2 with a speech from the throne and reintroduce the budget which triggered the snap election shortly thereafter.

The $130.4-billion spending blueprint aims to stimulate the economy with big spending, including $29 billion for public transit, roads and bridges over a decade, $2.5 billion in corporate grants to lure businesses to Ontario and better wages for workers in health care and education.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/ontario-premier-kathleen-wynnes-cabinet-to-feature-mp-mitzie-hunter-working-on-new-pension-plan/feed1Hunter and WynnethecanadianpressElectoral losers battle tyranny of the status quohttp://o.canada.com/news/electoral-losers-battle-tyranny-of-the-status-quo
http://o.canada.com/news/electoral-losers-battle-tyranny-of-the-status-quo#respondTue, 24 Jun 2014 01:11:46 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=471930]]>Since their election defeat two weeks ago, the Ontario Conservatives have not been short of helpful advice on what they should do next.

Liberals advised them to be more like, well, the Liberals, who won, it was said, by positioning themselves in the “activist centre,” which is apparently how we are now to describe a party that ran to the left of the NDP. Moderate conservatives advised them to be more like moderate conservatives. “The moderate conservatism of the Canadian experience,” arch-moderate Tory Hugh Segal sermonized, is about “balance and humility,” not “anger” or “narrow ideology.” He counselled a return to the centrist tradition of Mike Harris, who promised no more, he noted, than to return spending “to the levels of the Bill Davis Progressive Conservatives.” Actually he only returned it to the levels of the David Peterson Liberals, but you get the point.

If you are wondering how the centre could be simultaneously occupied by Kathleen Wynne and Mike Harris, it is perhaps suggestive of some of the problems with this kind of advice. On the one hand, it is a fine example of what has been called the “pundit’s fallacy,” which holds that the winning policy for a political party is whatever the writer happens to think is the right policy. Yet it is even more an example of what I might call the “politico’s fallacy,” which holds that the right policy for a party is whatever the winning policy is. So: if the Conservatives cannot win with the policies they have, they should simply adopt another set of policies — the ones I believe in. After all, as everyone knows, the way you win elections is by moving to the centre. And the centre, as it happens, is just where I’m standing.

Of course, at any given moment the centre is where a great number of people are standing. That is to say it is the status quo: the set of policies with support among enough voters to put the party that proposed them in power. The centre in politics tends to be defined as whatever happens to be the case, based on who won the last election. It is not some fixed meridian, independent of the push and pull of politics. It is defined by the winners. To say you win elections by moving to the centre is to get things precisely backwards. You win elections by moving the centre to you. Wynne defines where the political centre is today, just as Harris did in his day — not by watering down their policies, but by winning elections.

By contrast, the loser is instantly defined as being to the right or left of centre, no matter where the centre might have been before. Tim Hudak is now castigated as a “hard-right” ideologue — there were repeated comparisons, postelection, to the Tea Party — for having promised to spend $4 billion less than the Liberals would. After inflation and population growth, this would take spending all the way back to the levels of 2006, a dusty epoch before electricity and sidewalks when the province was governed by … the Dalton McGuinty Liberals. Even the much savaged reductions in the civil service amounted to 2.5 per cent per annum, or about one-third the normal rate of attrition.

If that is now defined as Ultima Thule, the place beyond the edge of the maps, from which the Conservatives must now hasten back to civilization, then it implies the expansion of the state is a one-way ratchet: no matter how large it grows or how fast, it can never be cut. For that would involve some departure, however slight, from the status quo. And thus, as we now see, the Tea Party.

There is a basic confusion at work here: not just between means and ends — you win power to put policy into effect, not the other way around — but between radicalism (even supposing Hudak were offering any) and extremism. No one wants to see Tea Party politics here, but what defines the Tea Party, at least in its excesses, is not its radicalism, but its extremism.

The distinction is critical. Radicalism, after all, a determination to break with the status quo, offering sweeping change in its place, is sometimes called vision: Vision is radicalism that sells. Certainly radical policy can be ill advised. But it is not ill advised simply for being radical. What matters is whether the policy is suited to the task, whether the change proposed is the change required. Provided it can be persuaded of its necessity, the public is quite open to radical change, whether of the right or left, as the examples of Wynne and Harris suggest.

What the public wants to know is not whether you are radical, but whether you are extreme. The first is a matter of ideology; the second of temperament. Whatever your views, the public is more interested in how you arrived at them, and how you would apply them. Have you been persuaded by the facts, that is, or just a priori dogma? Could you be persuaded otherwise by a different set of facts? Is it important to you to persuade other people, or just to shock them? Are you prepared to make reasonable compromises, or is it all or nothing?

No doubt there are limits to public tolerance, even so, if not in the direction of change, then at least in the pace. The prudent politician must find the overlap between what he believes and what he can realistically persuade the public to accept. But to suggest that an opposition party, particularly of the limited-government variety, can aspire to no more than to ratify the policies of its predecessors — that it must accept the state’s latest high-water mark as its irreducible minimum — is not to counsel moderation but complacency.

Perhaps that is how you win elections. The point is not that there are more important things than winning. It’s that it matters, surely, what you win for.

Postmedia News

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/electoral-losers-battle-tyranny-of-the-status-quo/feed0Tim HudakandrewcoyneOntario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak will step down on July 2. (PETER J. THOMPSON/Postmedia News)Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak addresses the media in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, June 12, 2014, as the province goes to the polls on election day. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young Den Tandt: After all the attacks, Justin Trudeau’s star hasn’t budgedhttp://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-after-all-the-attacks-justin-trudeaus-star-hasnt-budged
http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-after-all-the-attacks-justin-trudeaus-star-hasnt-budged#respondThu, 19 Jun 2014 18:51:35 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=469379]]>It’s strange, isn’t it, that Justin Trudeau’s star has not budged? The gaffes, the attack ads, the near-constant mockery in the Commons, still no policy book to be seen, then the dustup over abortion, with the Liberal caucus in some disarray, it would be fair to say. Ouch! That was going to deep-six the Dauphin for sure. The media furor alone should have been enough to sink him.

Yet that hasn’t happened. Indeed the latest poll by Forum Research shows that, if anything, Trudeau’s lead is hardening. Forum’s survey, taken June 16th and 17th, has the Grits at 39 per cent support, in strong minority territory, compared with 31 per cent for the Tories and a surprisingly limp 19 per cent for Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau speaks. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

How can this be? Recent provincial elections, including this month’s in Ontario, suggest an answer. What’s astonishing is that the federal Conservatives, supposed masters of the dark political arts, still fail to see it.

Consider that, where just leadership is concerned, the numbers are even more unsettling than the top-line data, if you’re a Tory or a Dipper. Just 34 per cent of respondents to Forum said they “approve” of the job Stephen Harper is doing as PM. Nearly twice that number, 58 per cent, disapprove, and eight per cent were non-committal. For Mulcair there’s a more even split; 38 per cent like how he does his job and 33 per cent dislike, with 29 per cent unsure. Trudeau tops the approval rankings, at 43 per cent pro, versus 38 per cent con, and 18 per cent in limbo.

Sure, it’s just one poll. But it’s not far off the median. Poll aggregator ThreeHundredEight.com’s numbers have the Liberals at 37, Conservatives at 31, and New Democrats at 21. That hasn’t budged much for a year. So, this much seems clear: Canadians are not keen on Stephen Harper, relatively speaking. They’re a bit fonder of Mulcair, but still don’t really feel they know him. And they continue to like Trudeau best, rather stubbornly, since this flies in the face of much of what they’ve been told about him for more than a year. If Trudeau once received overwhelmingly positive media coverage – which is debatable – that ended some time ago. In the fracas over his making abortion rights a sine qua non for the Liberal party, he has been loudly called a hypocrite, a dictator and inept caucus manager. Yet here we are. Why?

Ontario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne blows a kiss to supporters as Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau looks on in this file photo.. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

Let’s overlook the obvious, which is that clarifying the Liberal party’s position in favour of abortion access and choice has actually helped the party, because half the population is female and millions of Canadian men and women are socially progressive. That’s true, I think. But there’s more here than that.

Canadians in at least six major recent provincial elections or shifts – Alberta in 2012 and 2014, B.C. in 2013, Ontario in 2011 and 2014, Quebec in 2014 – have shown themselves to be change-averse, conflict-averse and, for lack of a better term, sentimental. Alberta chose the entrenched Progressive Conservatives over Reform-minded Wildrose because of anti-gay bozo eruptions during the 2012 campaign. Ontario passed on Tory Tim Hudak first because of an anti-immigrant theme in his 2011 campaign, and again this year because he vowed to get medieval on the public service. British Columbians kept Christy Clark in place because she was deemed the steadiest hand on the tiller. Quebecers overwhelmingly rejected separatist Pauline Marois because of Pierre Karl Peladeau’s upraised fist, and the prospect of another wrenching referendum on sovereignty.

The pattern throughout is progressive, but also conservative, in the classic sense of the word, meaning conservative of tradition and the status quo. The overarching value is a desire to avoid upheaval or, put another way, peace, order and the best government we can get, under the circumstances.

The other recurring takeaway from recent history is that a leader’s likeability matters. In the most recent campaign Hudak bet that although Ontarians might not like him, they’d agree with him — and thus vote for him. Oops. In Alberta Alison Redford’s likeability plummeted with revelations of her excessive spending, and that did her in. Likeability, as Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard showed in his winning campaign in March, does not require that a leader turn backflips or wear his heart on his sleeve. It does require that ordinary people believe he or she means well. A leader who has that quality gets the benefit of the doubt. A leader who doesn’t, doesn’t.

Justin Trudeau, for all that he’s made mistakes, has somehow persuaded a majority of Canadians that he means well. A year from go-time, this should be setting off the air-raid klaxon at Castle Langevin. It merits, at the very least, a re-branding of the Conservative party that stresses the positive, and not these stupid attack ads. Why there is no change in strategy, is anybody’s guess. Perhaps they’re just not up to it.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-after-all-the-attacks-justin-trudeaus-star-hasnt-budged/feed0trudeaumikedentandtLiberal leader Justin Trudeau speaks. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian WyldOntario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne blows a kiss to supporters as Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau looks on in this file photo.. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred ChartrandFlip Side: How Ontario’s Liberals pulled off a majorityhttp://o.canada.com/news/flip-side-how-ontarios-liberals-pulled-off-a-majority
http://o.canada.com/news/flip-side-how-ontarios-liberals-pulled-off-a-majority#respondFri, 13 Jun 2014 19:20:20 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=464752]]>On Thursday night the Ontario Liberals managed to not only stay in power, but win a majority. But given the aftertaste of scandal from Dalton McGuinty’s reign, how did leader Kathleen Wynne pull it off?

This week on the Flip Side, Lauren Strapagiel and Elissa Freeman discuss where the Liberals went right and where Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats went wrong.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/flip-side-how-ontarios-liberals-pulled-off-a-majority/feed0Kathleen WyneelaurenstrapaDen Tandt: Kathleen Wynne’s victory no blessing for Trudeau Gritshttp://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-wynnes-victory-no-blessing-for-trudeau-grits
http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-wynnes-victory-no-blessing-for-trudeau-grits#respondSun, 15 Jun 2014 16:28:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=465875]]>Federal Liberals have been turning cartwheels, at least publicly, since Kathleen Wynne’s triumph in the Ontario election last Thursday. To hear the chatter it’s as though the Red Team has opened up the approaches to Rome and is marching on the imperial palace. Can Stephen Harper’s legions long withstand the wave of Liberalism sweeping across Canada’s most populous province, home to 121 of 338 seats in the next federal vote?

The celebrations are premature.

Certainly from a ground-game perspective, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have been buoyed by the Ontario result. The federal and provincial wings of the Liberal party are essentially the same people, at the riding level. Volunteers and campaign workers are shared. This is somewhat less true in rural Ontario now than it is in urban centres, because the Green Energy Act and its wind turbines have alienated so many former countryside Liberals. But the countryside lacks the numbers to turn the tide. In the Greater Toronto Area, which already holds the whip hand population-wise and gains even more weight with the addition of new federal seats for Ontario, this is one party.

The Liberals were extraordinarily efficient at getting out their vote Thursday, which bespeaks good organization, efficient ground teams and a motivated base. Trudeau’s personal influence here cannot be dismissed; he campaigned actively with Wynne, despite the risk of brand bleed, more on that later, and contributed to her success. Trudeau is a ground-game politician. In that respect this Ontario race was a dress-rehearsal for the next federal campaign. That’s the good news, from a Liberal perspective.

The bad news, in a nutshell, is that Premier Kathleen Wynne and her government, their performance and the decisions they make in wielding majority power, will lay the table for the 2015 vote in Ontario, which in turn will determine the outcome nationally. The Trudeau Liberals are now in the peculiar position of being quite vulnerable to decisions made by a government in which they have no representation. They can apply moral suasion. Whether that works out for them remains to be seen.

Of course there’s the fact of Ontario’s traditional saw-off between federal and provincial levels of government, which I and others have written about recently. Stretching back to the Pierre Trudeau-Bill Davis era, with a bit of deviation here and there to allow for the human factor, Ontarians have stayed left at one level while moving right at the other. This is not rocket science; it’s simply sensible bet-hedging. If you have a government at Queen’s Park that is borrowing and spending and bulking up social programs, best put some miserly bean counters in Ottawa, and vice-versa.

At the level of pure rhetoric, the Harper Conservatives now have a solid line of attack in Ontario, which they’d not have had given a Tim Hudak victory. It’ll be as simple as throwing a copy of the Wynne government’s May budget on an overhead projector and saying, “You may not like us but you still need us, and here’s why.”

Except if – and now we get to Trudeau’s vulnerability – Wynne herself shifts into austerity mode, driven by the looming threat of credit-agency downgrades. With Ontario’s net debt pushing $270 billion and 40 per cent of GDP, and more than $10 billion annually going to interest payments, it’s inevitable this problem will surface, particularly if interest rates start to rise from their current historic lows. Tight oil driven by crises in the Ukraine and Iraq could also prove a spoiler.

This raises the prospect of Wynne imposing something like the Rae Days program of shared austerity that marked Bob Rae’s last year as Ontario premier in 1993-94, and caused Ontario unions, famously led by Leah Casselman and Buzz Hargrove, to disown him. It’s not likely, given that Wynne has spent the past six weeks campaigning on Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s free-spending budget, with its $12.5-billion deficit, that any kind of austerity will be imposed immediately. The temptation, perhaps driven by necessity, will be the 2015 provincial budget – just months before the federal election.

If Wynne handles this looming economic crisis with skill, restraint and a newfound parsimony – she has, after all, been released from her dependency on Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats – then she’ll make it easier for Ontarians to overlook the Conservatives’ economic street cred in 2015, and focus on their democratic failings.

If, on the other hand, she continues to borrow, tax and spend with abandon, or gets trapped in a Rae-like war of attrition with public service unions, she could salt Trudeau’s well. Inroads in B.C. and Quebec alone cannot win the federal Liberals power; they must have Ontario. It’s not at all as simple, in other words, as saying “Ontario moves into the Red column.” It may. Or it may not, depending on how Wynne plays the hand she’s been dealt.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-wynnes-victory-no-blessing-for-trudeau-grits/feed0wynnemikedentandtClerical error snatches Thornhill riding from Liberals, gives it to Torieshttp://o.canada.com/news/clerical-error-snatches-thornhill-riding-from-liberals-gives-it-to-tories
Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:42:44 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=465316]]>TORONTO — Elections Ontario has declared the Progressive Conservatives the winner in the riding of Thornhill after the discovery of an error in the vote tally up-ended what was initially declared a Liberal victory.

Spokesman Andrew Willis says the “official tabulation” of the results done on Friday has found PC incumbent Gila Martow was the winner by 85 votes.

The initial count done on election night had given the seat, which sits north of Toronto, to Liberal Sandra Racco by that very same margin.

That means the election results, which are still considered preliminary, now have Ontario’s Liberals with 58 seats compared to 28 for the Tories.

Willis says the new outcome is the result of a “very comprehensive review” of the vote calculation that found a minor clerical error.

The change doesn’t affect the status of the Liberal majority government.

Willis said Saturday that the Thornhill riding was the only one to have such a tabulation error.

]]>Kathleen WynnethecanadianpressOntario election: Women now represent 35 per cent of legislaturehttp://o.canada.com/news/ontario-election-women-now-represent-35-per-cent-of-legislature
http://o.canada.com/news/ontario-election-women-now-represent-35-per-cent-of-legislature#respondFri, 13 Jun 2014 20:34:30 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=464822]]>Thursday’s election in Ontario increased the representation of Liberals at Queen’s Park, but it also increased the number of women sittings as MPPs.

In all, Ontarians elected 38 female MPPs in the election out of 107 ridings, for a total of 35 per cent of the new legislature. It’s a modest increase from the last election in 2011 when 30 women were elected, making up 28 per cent of MPPs.

Breaking that down by party, 35 per cent of elected Liberals, 52 per cent of elected New Democrats and 22 per cent of elected Progressive Conservatives are women.

These numbers aren’t more or less in line with the number of women candidates each party ran. In May, Canada.com analyzed each party’s candidates and found that 35 per cent of the Liberals’ candidates were women, compared to 42 per cent of NDP candidates and 25 per cent of PC candidates.

For comparison, about 25 per cent the federal government are women.

In that earlier anaylsis, we also looked at the number of candidates that were visible minorities. Using Statistics Canada’s definition of “visible minority,” we found the Liberals had the greatest diversity with 24 per cent of candidates falling into that category. The NDP were behind at 19 per cent and the PCs trailed at 17 per cent.

In Ontario’s new government, just 16.8 per cent of MPPs are visible minorities, well below Ontario’s general population which was about 30 per cent in 2011.

As we’ve said before, there’s more to diversity than gender and race, and it’s worth noting Ontario’s premier is an out, gay woman. But as the numbers show, we still have a ways to go in turning the tide on the ol’ boys club that is politics.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/ontario-election-women-now-represent-35-per-cent-of-legislature/feed0Kathleen WynnelaurenstrapaKathleen Wynne’s Liberals get majority with a third of popular votehttp://o.canada.com/news/wynnes-liberals-get-majority-with-a-third-of-popular-vote
http://o.canada.com/news/wynnes-liberals-get-majority-with-a-third-of-popular-vote#respondFri, 13 Jun 2014 03:16:25 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=464209]]>By Joseph Brean

The Liberals’ landslide victory — in seats, if not the popular vote — has handed another piece of ammunition to opponents of the traditional first-past-the-post election style.

By handing Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals an apparent majority with perhaps a third of the popular vote, the outcome will be held up as a powerful argument in favour of proportional representation, the much discussed alternative that Ontario voters rejected in a 2007 referendum.

As the Catch 22 Campaign, a defunct remnant of the 2011 effort to bring proportional representation to Canada put it on Twitter: “6% popular vote dif between OLP & PCs gives Wynne double the seats. “The people have spoken” Right. Time for prop rep!”

The results were strikingly similar to another key example of this populist electoral reform project — the 1990 election that brought Bob Rae to power as the province’s first and only NDP premier, and saw then-Liberal leader David Peterson lose his own seat and 59 others.

In those results, Mr. Rae took 37.6% of the popular vote, beating Mr. Peterson by a slight 5%. Still, the NDP more than doubled the Liberal seat count, 74 to 36.

Ontario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne (in red) sits with her mother Patsy O’Day (right) and father John Wynne along with partner Jane Rounthwaite (left) as they watch election results in Toronto on Thursday June 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

This time, the Liberal popular vote was hovering around 37%, to the Progressive Conservatives’ 31% and the NDP’s 26%, for a total spread across the three main parties of barely 10 percentage points.

And yet, it took only about an hour for the first news outlets to call a predicted majority, with the second place PCs winning less than half the number of seats as the Liberals.

Even within the Liberal party’s own fortunes, a shift of a couple of percentage points has meant the difference between victory and defeat.

Most bafflingly, in 1999, the Liberals came away with a greater share of the popular vote than this year, and yet they wound up in second place.

National Post
jbrean@nationalpost.com

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/wynnes-liberals-get-majority-with-a-third-of-popular-vote/feed0Kathleen Wynnethenationalpost1Ontario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne (in red) sits with her mother Patsy O'Day (right) and father John Wynne along with partner Jane Rounthwaite (left) as they watch election results in Toronto on Thursday June 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)Den Tandt: Conservative Leader Tim Hudak too harsh for Ontarians, loses election and jobhttp://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-conservative-leader-tim-hudak-too-harsh-for-ontarians-loses-election-and-job
http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-conservative-leader-tim-hudak-too-harsh-for-ontarians-loses-election-and-job#respondFri, 13 Jun 2014 03:18:10 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=464212]]>So, it’s a Wynne win, and a majority at that. Where to begin?

We could say that, given the other selections on the menu, Ontarians opted for the devil they know. Or, we could say that NDP leader Andrea Horwath lacked a credible pretext for precipitating this vote, and has paid the price. Further, we could say that Conservative leader Tim Hudak ran an unnecessarily harsh and ideological campaign that pushed many swing voters into other camps, costing his party the ball game — and him his job.

Each of these threads will be fleshed out in the days to come; each is partly true. None will capture the full range of puzzlement many Ontarians will feel as they grapple with the reality that, after all the fuss and bother, it’s still the Liberals in charge. Only more so.

Any way you parse the result, this much is truly staggering: Eleven years of Ontario Liberal scandal — broken promises, the gas plants and Ornge, eHealth and OLG, Caledonia and prorogation, industrial wind farms, soaring hydro prices and the Green Energy Act, mounting deficits and debt, the shift from have to have-not status — weren’t enough to propel the Conservatives to power, or the Liberals into the weeds.

The opposite occurred. That’s a negative hat trick, for the Tories. This will require some intense soul-searching on their part; not just a change of leaders.

For Wynne personally, it’s a huge victory. When she took over the Liberal leadership at the beginning of 2013, few would have given a plug nickel for her chances of survival. The monumental mess of the gas-plant scandal and ensuing prorogation seemed too big for any party, particularly a late-cycle party, to weather.

Yet survive she did, long enough to establish herself as at least middling credible and trustworthy, in the minds of many voters. Her performance in the televised debate June 3 was weak; she struggled under the dead weight of the Liberal record. Yet somehow, after suffering an initial dip in post-debate polls, she managed to bounce back.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne celebrates on stage with her family after winning the provincial election. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

That bounce, logically, had less to do with her than it did with Hudak, and his plan, and his selling of his plan. Both Hudak and Horwath appear to have entered this campaign with an almost bug-eyed determination to ignore political reality at all costs. Horwath had to have known her chances of improving her position were slim; Hudak must have realized that a hard right turn and zealous union-bashing would alienate many of the people he needed to persuade. He explained himself repeatedly in interviews, and campaign appearances: He would be honest, clear-eyed, tell hard truths, and let the chips fall where they may.

Frank speech is good, of course. But Hudak went further; On May 9, in a campaign stop in Barrie, he promised to lop 100,000 jobs out of the public sector — without firing a single nurse, doctor or police officer — and bring the province’s books to balance within two years.

That represented a 15-per-cent downsizing of the public sector. At the same time he pledged to chop corporate taxes down to eight per cent, from the current 11.5 per cent, and in so doing create a million jobs within eight years. In the TV debate, he promised dramatically to resign if he failed.

But the million-jobs plan was half-baked. It was based on accounting that considered any one-year term of employment to be a job, thus boosting his numbers by a factor of eight. Further, it emerged that half those jobs were expected to accrue regardless. This was a huge bungle — which Hudak blithely ignored after he was called out on it. As for the job cuts, it turned out Ontarians don’t particularly want that many civil servants fired, in a hurry.

By the time Hudak finally got around to telling people that 80 per cent of the cuts would be from attrition or retirement, it was too late. The zeal for job cuts, and the specious math, did him in.

The Ontario Tories must now reconcile themselves to the fact the old balanced pattern of the province’s politics is rock-solid; Ontarians are loath to install a right-leaning government at Queen’s Park when one is in power in Ottawa, and vice versa. For the foreseeable future, the Conservatives must live up to their namesake, “progressive,” or they can forget winning power. That means they’ll need a new leader. Hudak opted, rather courageously, to go out with his shield, or on it. He went out on it.

The upshot for Ontarians, in a nutshell? Kathleen Wynne’s spring budget, which precipitated this contest, is back on the table. And the province will continue rolling along, living beyond its means, until it no longer can. Austerity is coming, sooner or later. Ontarians have opted for a gentler hand to wield the blade.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-conservative-leader-tim-hudak-too-harsh-for-ontarians-loses-election-and-job/feed0Tim-Hudak-Debbie-Hutton.jpgmikedentandtOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne celebrates on stage with her family after winning the provincial election. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank GunnOntario PC Tim Hudak announces he will step down as leader. (Peter J. Thompson/National Post)Three things to watch for tonight in the Ontario electionhttp://o.canada.com/news/three-things-to-watch-for-tonight-in-the-ontario-election
http://o.canada.com/news/three-things-to-watch-for-tonight-in-the-ontario-election#respondThu, 12 Jun 2014 23:23:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=464051]]>National Post’s Scott Stinson takes a look at three things you’ll want to keep your eye on as the NDP, Liberals and Conservatives battle for seats in the Ontario election.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne casts her ballot in the provincial election in Toronto on Thursday June 12, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak arrives at a campaign rally on Wednesday June 11, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath acknowledges supporters while arriving at a campaign stop in Brantford, Ont. on Tuesday, June 10, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/three-things-to-watch-for-tonight-in-the-ontario-election/feed0Ontario electionthenationalpost1Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne casts her ballot in the provincial election in Toronto on Thursday June 12, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunntim hudakOntario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath acknowledges supporters while arriving at a campaign stop in Brantford, Ont. on Tuesday, June 10, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren CalabreseMaher: Voter turns up at wrong polling station thanks to odd letterhttp://o.canada.com/news/voter-turns-up-at-wrong-polling-station-thanks-to-odd-letter
http://o.canada.com/news/voter-turns-up-at-wrong-polling-station-thanks-to-odd-letter#respondThu, 12 Jun 2014 22:01:17 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=463971]]>OTTAWA — A voter here ended up at the wrong polling station on Thursday, thanks to an odd letter with bad information that the provincial Tories sent to voters.

When Kelly Dean, who lives in Ottawa-West Nepean riding, planned to vote on her way to work on Thursday, she grabbed a letter a neighbour sent to her husband, advising him to vote at a local high school.

When she got to the school, though, she was advised that she was supposed to vote at a nearby elementary school. Once she got to the office, she read a Postmedia News story about letters that have gone out in two different ridings.

“I saw that it was in two different cities,” she said. “I thought maybe it’s not a busybody. I don’t know.”

Voters arrive at a polling station in Toronto to cast their vote for the Ontario provincial election on Thursday, June 12, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

Dean has a Liberal sign on her lawn. So did one of the recipients of a similar letter in another riding, London North Centre.

Brigitte Zirger, another Ottawa woman who received the letter, says she had let local Progressive Conservative candidate Randall Denley know she would not be voting for him. Denley is seeking to take the seat from Liberal incumbent Bob Chiarelli, who in 2011 won by 1,009 votes.

The Liberals have asked Elections Ontario to investigate, suggesting the letters may be a voter-suppression scheme similar to a robocall in Guelph, Ont., in the last federal election. The Conservatives have apologized for sending voters bad information, but say the whole thing results from administrative errors.

The letters take a chatty, neighbourly tone, encouraging the recipient to vote.

Election workers at a Parkdale/High Park Returning Station on Mavety Street mark down which polls are open for the Ontario Provincial Election in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim)

“It’s a good idea to have a plan to vote in Thursday’s election,” said the Ottawa letter. “I will be voting on my way home from work, but well before the polls close at 9:00 PM. I plan to just walk over to St. Paul High School, and hopefully the weather will cooperate so I won’t need my umbrella.”

The letters were sent in the names of local Progressive Conservative supporters but were actually written and mailed from party headquarters in Toronto.

Party spokesman Will Stewart says 65 letters were sent in London with the wrong polling station and 109 were sent in Ottawa.

A voter card is pictured on election day in Ontario on Thursday June 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

“As soon as we learned about it, we did a voicemail drop to all of them to explain the error and direct them to the right polling station,” Stewart said Thursday.

Neither the letters nor the envelopes identify the letters as coming from the Tories.

Maria Martins, manager of Election Finances at Elections Ontario, said Thursday that the letters appear to comply with provincial election law, which requires political ads to identify the campaign behind them.

“It doesn’t seem to be a political advertisement because it’s not supporting or opposing a candidate or party,” Martins said.

Jack Siegel, a lawyer for the Ontario Liberal party, suspects the letters were sent out to trick non-supporters.

“I think that they are probably sending out legitimate pieces and are getting mischievious about it and sending out some that do misdirect.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/voter-turns-up-at-wrong-polling-station-thanks-to-odd-letter/feed0Ontario electionstphnmaherVoters arrive at a polling station in Toronto to cast their vote for the Ontario provincial election on Thursday, June 12, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren CalabreseElection workers at a Parkdale/High Park Returning Station on Mavety Street mark down which polls are open for the Ontario Provincial Election in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim)A voter card is pictured on election day in Ontario on Thursday June 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick) Den Tandt: Tim Hudak faces do-or-die momenthttp://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-tim-hudak-faces-do-or-die-moment
http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-tim-hudak-faces-do-or-die-moment#respondTue, 10 Jun 2014 20:17:53 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=461761]]>Uninspiring? Depressing? Maddening? Pick your poison. As the Ontario election race limps into its final hours we are left much as we began, facing an unpalatable set of choices that bode nothing but trouble ahead for Canada’s largest province. If there’s any ray of light here, it’s hard to discern.

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak, centre, laughs before he makes an announcement at a packaging plant about creating 40,000 jobs in Ontarioin this file photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

Granted, PC leader Tim Hudak may yet win this thing. The latest polls could be wrong. They were way wrong in 2012 in Alberta. Hudak could win if his ground teams get out their vote and Grit leader Kathleen Wynne’s people stay home. He could win if New Democrat Andrea Horwath’s calculated shift to the centre succeeds only in drawing off enough disgruntled Liberals to split the centre-left. He could win if, deus ex machina, another major Liberal scandal erupts — in the next 20 hours. He could win a majority still. Nothing is certain.

But it’s all rather flimsy, nothing like the prospect of certain victory the Conservatives should be enjoying after 11 years of McGuinty Liberalism, replete with egregiously wasteful boondoggles, in a campaign marked by another half-billion-dollar scandal, and amid a regional depression in the manufacturing sector. Under these circumstances the wave of change should be compelling, urgent even. Yet it isn’t, apparently.

Rather, the Conservative leader faces long odds of taking a majority. Should he win a minority he could be deposed immediately, if Wynne and Horwath have the combined numbers to make a majority, and decide to work together. Or he could lose power within months. Wynne has already ruled out supporting a minority Hudak regime. Horwath has rejected a coalition with him, which in theory leaves open the possibility she’d prop them up, as she did Wynne for months. But how can that work? For Hudak, the man who has vowed to lop off the heads of 100,000 public servants, to find common ground with Horwath, would require both to contort themselves into shapes that would be un-recognizable to their own parties. It’s not plausible.

The most workable arrangement in a minority context, surreally, is another Liberal government — propped up, yet again, by the New Democrats. Poll aggregator threehundredeight.com, which called the Quebec election almost to the seat, has the Liberals taking a median 51 ridings, just shy of a majority. At dissolution they had 48. Groundhog Day.

How could this happen? Hudak won the televised debate last week, hands-down. But perhaps too few Ontarians were engaged enough by then to pay attention. The Harper Conservative government has shown, time and time again, that people vote their own interest. We can assume that Hudak’s early promise to take 100,000 employees off the provincial payroll — 15 per cent of the total, since nurses, doctors and cops are off limits — seemed too radical to many. Had he softened the blow, he might have avoided being branded as Dr. Scary. Had he said that making such cuts would be painful and regrettable, but necessary, he might even have won plaudits.

Instead it was left to his candidates in the ridings to mumble excuses about the job cuts, and his half-baked “million-jobs” projections too. He only ratcheted back his rhetoric once the damage was done. Shades of predecessor John Tory, with his eleventh-hour climbdown on secular schools funding, too late to prevent a rout.

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak holds a town hall meeting in this file photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)

As I and many others have written previously, there is no question but that Ontario’s economy is on the wrong track. There is no question but that spending and debt are out of control. There is no question but that these Liberals are unfit to manage the public purse of the country’s most populous province. There is no question but that the budget that precipitated this campaign was a tissue of half-baked promises, irresponsible and dishonest.

Having said that, there is also no doubt that many Ontarians, and not just those living in the Greater Toronto Area, do not remember the Mike Harris years in the 1990s as a happy time. The protests, the battles with unions, the Ipperwash mess, the breakage that occurred through the forced and often shoddy amalgamations of many municipalities, the pell-mell, ham-fisted deregulation that contributed to the Walkerton water tragedy, left a bitter and enduring taste. Faced with the prospect of a return to that, many Ontarians (again, if the polls bear out) have turned thumbs down, and basic economics be damned. Meantime, the provincial NDP, still languishing in the low twenties in support, face an existential crisis: Who are they, if their attempt to run as Liberals, with different bums in seats, falls flat?

This has to be galling, for Conservatives: Hudak needed only to show moderation — a reluctance to do harm, a non-ideological reach across the aisle. He could have faked it, and been believed. He chose otherwise, which is why his leadership now hangs in the balance. Come Thursday, he must pull of a June surprise. Otherwise, the blades will come out.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/den-tandt-tim-hudak-faces-do-or-die-moment/feed0Tim-HudakmikedentandtOntario PC Leader Tim Hudak, centre, laughs before he makes an announcement at a packaging plant about creating 40,000 jobs in Ontario with affordable energy during a campaign stop in Smithville, Ont., on Monday, May 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak at a media session in Orleansin this file photo. (Pat McGrath / OTTAWA CITIZEN)Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak holds a town hall meeting in this file photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)Den Tandt: Tim Hudak clear winner in Ontario leaders debatehttp://o.canada.com/news/tim-hudak-clear-winner-in-ontario-leaders-debate
http://o.canada.com/news/tim-hudak-clear-winner-in-ontario-leaders-debate#commentsWed, 04 Jun 2014 01:14:38 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=457388]]>Tim Hudak, who has struggled to connect so far in the Ontario election campaign, emerged the clear winner from a TV debate Tuesday evening that saw the Tory leader sharply differentiate his policies from those of his two opponents, while also humanizing a personal brand that had previously taken a protracted pounding.

For Andrea Horwath, the New Democratic Party leader whose thumbs-down on the recent Ontario budget initiated this campaign, the evening was no great flop, but no great success either; at best, she held her ground. Whereas for Kathleen Wynne, the earnest successor to former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty, the engagement was an almost unmitigated disaster. There was no knockout blow, but rather, a series of damaging jabs. These began from the opening bell and continued, almost without letup, for just under 90 minutes.

It was obvious from the opening seconds, when Horwath leaped straight to the attack over the Liberals’ $1-billion gas-plant dodge during the 2011 campaign, that Wynne would have her hands full. She spent the better part of five minutes apologizing and hurling imprecations at the government in which she’d been a senior minister. This made it awkward for her, when both Hudak and Horwath asked why she’d signed off, as a cabinet member, on the gas-plant shuffle, rather than say no? “I was part of a government,” was all Wynne could respond. Shades of John Turner.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne Ontario take part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

The big surprise — though it should have come as no surprise — came next, as a series of clear-eyed, unrelenting questions were levelled at Wynne, by hand-picked “ordinary Ontarians.” The questions, and their answers, threw into sharp relief the very challenging task she faces, as she seeks to both defend and distance herself from her party’s record.

Justification for soaring electricity rates? Wynne had no good answer, falling back repeatedly on her mantra of “investment.” How to cut the debt and deficit? Wynne appeared to argue, in essence, that if the provincial government only borrows and spends enough, eventually everyone will have an excellent job. Repeatedly she declined to say how she’ll balance the books, as called for by her own budget plan, in 2017/18. Transit? Invest, invest, invest, urged Wynne.

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak, left, laughs next to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, right, after taking part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

After the opening moments, Horwath quickly fell into the trap she set for herself when she developed a policy platform that reads very much like the Liberal policy platform: In essence, vote for us, because we’ll do what they would have done, only more honestly. Her early attacks on Wynne scored, but her own policy nostrums faded into the miasma of “invest, invest, invest,” emanating from Wynne’s corner.

Hudak, by contrast, appeared to grow more confident and relaxed as the debate wore on. He faced two tough questions; one on the mangled math in his “million-jobs” plan and 100,000 layoff plan; another on education. In each case, he could easily have bombed. In the first instance he said what he should have said forcefully weeks ago, which is that most of the job cuts will come from retirement and attrition. In the second instance, where he could have taken a drubbing from Wynne and Horwath over plans to increase class sizes, he spoke about his daughter, Miller, who has special needs, and doing more for children with autism.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, left, and Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak take part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Time and time again through the debate Hudak seized opportunities to cast himself as the lone blunt politician in a sea of blather — which, based on the general thrust of his platform versus those of his opponents, is more or less true. Whatever one may think of his job-creation predictions, which are wishful thinking at best, he has said that government spending must shrink and the debt and deficit must be reined in. Neither of his opponents believes that.

More importantly, Hudak was the only one of the three to get personal, speaking first of the pain of his grandfather losing the family farm during the Great Depression, then of his own children, then tossing in Obama-esque anecdotes about encounters with ordinary Ontarians. Not only did he do this, while Wynne and Horwath did not; but he made it sound almost, and at times quite, sincere.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne takes part in the Ontario provincial leaders debate in Toronto, Tuesday June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark Blinch

Sincerity, since he became the leader of his party, has been Hudak’s Achilles heel. Along with his penchant for ideological overreach, it laid him low in 2011. Even in this campaign, in press appearances, he has sometimes seemed tentative and unsure, or overly scripted. Whether by practice or conviction, he shed some of that tonight.

He also has been studying his U.S. history; “It’s morning in America,” declared the Ronald Reagan campaign commercial in 1984. “Hope is coming,” declared Hudak in his closing remarks. For a politician long stuck in permanent attack mode, this was something new, and clever, in that it offsets the fear of Mike Harris-style negativity that still weighs on the Conservatives.

According to threehundredeight.com’s aggregated data, the race is now too close to call, with the Liberals holding a narrow lead. Expect that to change, in the first post-debate polls.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/tim-hudak-clear-winner-in-ontario-leaders-debate/feed1Kathleen Wynne; Tim Hudak; Andrea HorwathmikedentandtOntario Premier and Ontario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne, centre, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, and Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak. THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark BlinchNDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne Ontario take part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank GunnOntario PC leader Tim Hudak, left, laughs next to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, right, after taking part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, left, and Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak take part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank GunnOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne takes part in the Ontario provincial leaders debate in Toronto, Tuesday June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark BlinchGas plants, corruption, energy prices top issues in Ontario leaders’ debatehttp://o.canada.com/news/gas-plants-and-corruption-top-issues-early-in-ontario-leaders-debate
Tue, 03 Jun 2014 22:57:12 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=457307]]>TORONTO — Liberal corruption and the Conservatives’ plan to cut public sector jobs dominated the Ontario leader’s election debate Tuesday, with the $1.1 billion gas plants scandal landing as the very first question for Premier Kathleen Wynne.

The Liberal leader was on the defensive from the very start of the 90-minute debate, forced to apologize repeatedly for the decision to cancel two gas plants prior to the last election and defend soaring electricity rates.

“The decisions around the relocation of the gas plants were wrong,” Wynne admitted. “There was public money that was wasted, and in the process the public good was sacrificed to partisan interests.”

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne takes part in the Ontario provincial leaders debate in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark Blinch)

Wynne said she’s taken action to ensure that “the breach of trust between the government and the people” does not happen again.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak defended his plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs while promising to create one million new jobs over eight years, with both Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath saying he made a basic math mistake.

“I’m so confident in my plan that if I don’t carry through and keep my promises in the Million Jobs Plan, I’ll resign, I’ll step down from office,” said Hudak.

“If I don’t balance the budget in two years, I’ll step aside,” the Tory leader told reporters after the debate. “I hope the other two leaders will make the same commitment.”

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak takes part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

Hudak insisted he would eliminate the $12.5-billion deficit in two years even if Ontario falls into another recession.

Horwath went on the attack early in the debate, lashing out at Wynne for the gas plants cancellations and scandals at eHealth Ontario and the Ornge air ambulance service, while also warning that Hudak’s plan to cut existing jobs to create new jobs doesn’t make sense.

“You don’t have to choose between bad ethics and bad math,” said Horwath.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath takes part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

The NDP leader scored her best shot when she asked Wynne point blank why she didn’t refuse to sign a document cancelling one of the two gas plants.

“You had a choice when you were going to sign off on those gas plant documents,” said Horwath. “Why did you not choose to stand up for the people of Ontario and ensure that those documents weren’t signed? Why did you make the wrong choice?”

Wynne responded by saying she’s apologized for the gas plants.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne Ontario take part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election campaign in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark Blinch)

“I have taken responsibility for being part of a government that made decisions that were wrong,” she said.

The three leaders answered six questions posed by voters on topics including government ethics, job creation, education, transit and the deficit.

Ontario voters go to the polls on June 12.

]]>Kathleen Wynne; Tim Hudak; Andrea HorwaththecanadianpressOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne takes part in the Ontario provincial leaders debate in Toronto, Tuesday June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark Blinch Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak takes part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn NDP leader Andrea Horwath takes part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn NDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne Ontario take part in the live leaders debate at CBC during the Ontario election campaign in Toronto on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/POOL-Mark Blinch Ontario election: it’s about to get nasty, experts sayhttp://o.canada.com/news/ontario-election-its-about-to-get-nasty-experts-say
http://o.canada.com/news/ontario-election-its-about-to-get-nasty-experts-say#commentsSun, 01 Jun 2014 14:51:40 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=455718]]>TORONTO – Despite allegations of corruption, recklessness, dishonesty, and possibly criminal behaviour that have sprouted like noxious weeds on Ontario’s campaign trail, this election has not been especially nasty, experts say.

However, they say, that’s likely to change before voting day.

“It doesn’t look that much out of the ordinary,” said Dennis Pilon, a political science professor at York University.

“(But) there’s going to be new bombshells dropped, particularly close to election day, when it will be too late and too difficult for campaigns to respond.”

What mud sticks: That’s the key game that’s going on.

So far, the three main political camps have largely tended to avoid firing their mud canons directly at the rival party’s leader, hoping instead enough dirt will stick by innuendo and association.

Whether the mudslinging proves effective in persuading people to vote one way or another — or perhaps not at all — remains to be seen, but it does appear to get people to take notice.

“By using those extreme terms, you certainly get the attention,” said Alan Middleton, professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business.

“What mud sticks: That’s the key game that’s going on.”

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is seen on the election campaign trail in Sarnia, Ont., on Friday, May 16, 2014.

The most pointed barbs to this point have come from New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath and rival Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.

At almost every turn, they have tried to paint the governing Liberals as scandal-riven, untrustworthy and worse.

“This campaign is really about cleaning up the corruption at Queen’s Park,” Horwath said at one point — a theme repeated in most NDP messaging.

“This Liberal party has behaved in a way that is corrupt.”

Hudak, too, has tried to tie the Liberals — and Premier Kathleen Wynne in particular — to corruption.

“We have seen again and again that the world of crony capitalism — where big government gets into bed with big business — that’s how corruption starts,” Hudak said at one campaign stop.

The Tory leader has also invoked the federal Adscam scandal where criminal charges were laid and notes police are investigating the destruction of records in the premier’s office related to the gas plant fiasco.

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak, centre, laughs before he makes an announcement at a packaging plant about creating 40,000 jobs in Ontario with affordable energy during a campaign stop in Smithville, Ont., on Monday, May 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

Peter Graefe, a political science professor at McMaster University, said the campaign has been slightly nastier than in 2011, particularly when it comes to the NDP’s aggressive anti-Liberal rhetoric.

For her part, Wynne has attacked Hudak for his “reckless” commitment to fire 100,000 civil servants if elected, while relentlessly attempting to portray Horwath and the NDP as having betrayed the party’s principles.

Wayne Petrozzi, a politics professor at Ryerson University, said he didn’t think the campaign had been particularly negative, yet.

“We tend to think of negative in terms of personal attacks,” Petrozzi said. “For the most part, so far, the focus has remained on issues.”

Cameron Anderson, a political science professor at Western University, said federal Conservative attack ads directed at Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau or past one aimed at his predecessors were far more negative than those of the Ontario campaign.

“It’s been more policy related rather than this person is a bad person,” Anderson said.

Demonizing a leader can backfire badly — as the federal Conservatives once discovered with a tasteless attack on former prime minister Jean Chretien’s slight facial deformity.

Perhaps that’s why Horwath, for example, has refused to brand Wynne herself as corrupt or Hudak has not yet called her a crook.

“I suspect that it will turn, that character will become the focus,” Petrozzi said.

-With files from Allison Jones

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/ontario-election-its-about-to-get-nasty-experts-say/feed1Kathleen Wynne; Liz SandalsthecanadianpressOntario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is seen on the election campaign trail in Sarnia, Ont., on Friday, May 16, 2014. Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak, centre, laughs before he makes an announcement at a packaging plant about creating 40,000 jobs in Ontario with affordable energy during a campaign stop in Smithville, Ont., on Monday, May 12, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)NDP’s Andrea Horwath makes it clear she is going for Ontario’s top jobhttp://o.canada.com/news/ndps-andrea-horwath-makes-it-clear-she-is-going-for-ontarios-top-job
Sat, 31 May 2014 16:55:59 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=455479]]>HAMILTON, Ont. — The NDP’s Andrea Horwath says she wants to make it clear she’s running to be Ontario’s next premier.

The leader of the third party says New Democrats are a realistic alternative to what she calls the “corrupt” Liberals.

The Progressive Conservatives, she says, would set Ontario back with deep public-sector cuts.

Both Premier Kathleen Wynne and Tory leader Tim Hudak have tried to frame the election as a two way race, while largely dismissing the NDP.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath speaks to the media at a news conference at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Friday, June 15, 2012. Chris Young/The Canadian Press

But Horwath is shrugging off suggestions that Ontarians might choose to ignore the New Democrats to try to stop the Liberals or PCs from winning office.

Instead, she says New Democrats would not waste taxpayer dollars as the Liberals have done with decisions like cancelling two gas plants at a cost of up to $1.1 billion.

“This is an important election,” Horwath said in Hamilton on Sunday after voting at an advance poll.

“We do not have to have a Liberal government that is corrupt, that wastes our tax dollars, that doesn’t respect the hard-earned money that you send to Queen’s Park, and we don’t have to have a Hudak government frankly that makes no sense whatsoever.”

Horwath says the NDP would not slash 100,000 public sector jobs — a direct jab at Hudak’s plan to cut 10 per cent of the public sector.

]]>HorwaththecanadianpressOntario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath speaks to the media at a news conference at Queen's Park in Toronto on Friday, June 15, 2012.NDPDen Tandt: Michael Chong’s Reform Act isn’t going awayhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/michael-chongs-reform-act-isnt-going-away
http://o.canada.com/news/national/michael-chongs-reform-act-isnt-going-away#respondThu, 29 May 2014 18:20:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=454375]]>Michael Chong’s private member’s bill, the Reform Act, is the plucky, underdog outgrowth of years of frustration among backbench MPs about the steady erosion of their powers, beginning really in 1970 under Pierre Trudeau, who famously referred to them as “nobodies.” Still only at second reading, Chong’s bill is by no means a sure thing. But nor is it going away.

Last December, when the Ontario Conservative MP’s project first hit the news, it caused a furor on Parliament Hill as MPs of all parties, and their leaders, sought to calibrate their reactions just so. There was some early support, from backbench stalwarts, and also a few tentative, qualified murmurs of praise, from the NDP and Liberal leadership camps. From the Prime Minister’s Office, there was the sound of crickets.

The reason of course, is simple: Though a long-standing brainchild of Chong’s, this bill only saw the light of day because of the unprecedented discussion of accountability that accompanied the Senate spending scandal and the controversy involving the prime minister’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and suspended senator Mike Duffy. The Liberals and New Democrats, amid the bloom of concern over the concentration of arbitrary power in the PMO, pushed hard for reform, which seemed like a great idea to them at the time, and Chong caught that wave. Once launched, though, such ripples are difficult to contain.

In the case of the current leaders, neither Liberal Justin Trudeau nor New Democrat Tom Mulcair can feel any giddier than does Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at the prospect of having their wings clipped, as the Reform Act envisions.

Not only would party heads lose the power to veto a candidate’s nomination, which an amendment to the Canada Elections Act gave them in 1970; they’d also lose authority over expulsions from caucus and the appointment of caucus chairs. At the same time they’d become, along with Harper — assuming he remains Conservative leader following the next election — the first Canadian national political leaders ever shackled with a federally legislated caucus leadership review process.

On the basis of a 15-per-cent initial vote of caucus, followed by a majority vote, they could be turfed, under the rules in the initial draft of the bill. In the second draft, that threshold has been raised to 20 per cent. Either way, particularly for the leader of a party with a low seat count, it’s a new threat. Trudeau, for example, could be forced to defend his leadership following an initial vote of just seven of his 35-member caucus. Though this law wouldn’t go into effect until after the next election, it would certainly be germane for one of the three present leaders, and perhaps two – the ones who lose.

Conservative MP Michael Chong introduced a bill that would give party caucuses more power — including the power to vote for a leadership review.

There were flaws in the initial draft, the main ones being a too-low threshold for igniting a leadership review, and the apparent loss of control, by the parties, over their brands. To Chong’s credit, he has addressed both problems. In addition to boosting the initial threshold for a leadership review to 20 per cent, the re-draft stipulates it must be 20 per cent of the whole caucus, not just of those present for a given vote, and also – and this is key – that this initial vote must be public. The rebel angels will need the courage of their convictions, in other words.

On the second point, there was a legitimate concern that, without the necessity of securing the party leader’s approval, a Trojan horse could get himself or herself nominated, then pursue an agenda inimical to the party’s. That has been resolved by the idea of provincial nomination officers, elected by all the riding presidents in any given province. Not only that but the party leader would retain the right to “decertify” an entire riding association, in extremis, assuming one goes entirely mad.

Now, here’s the interesting thing: As the leaders’ offices have gone preternaturally quiet on the topic, enthusiasm among backbenchers has slowly built. There’s little question of this being a whipped vote, for any party; the leader who ordered that would be inaugurating his own political decline. Conservative and NDP caucus members expect Chong’s bill will receive support from a majority of their members. Trudeau’s office has punted on the matter for now, throwing it out to the party membership in an internal poll. But the fact is that the Liberal leader cannot be seen to block this reform, any more than can his two rivals, because he has made democratic reform a key priority.

The question the leaders face, then, is this: Do they murmur polite acquiescence in public, allow their caucuses free votes of course, but then work quietly against Chong behind the scenes, to derail him in committee? Or do they accept that passage in some form is inevitable, and seek to put themselves ahead of the wave? It is not, actually, the end of the world for a political leader to be required to lead by persuasion, rather than brute force. It’s how it should be.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/michael-chongs-reform-act-isnt-going-away/feed0MP Michael ChongmikedentandtConservative MP Michael Chong introduced a bill that would give party caucuses more power — including the power to vote for a leadership review.Ontario election: Which party’s candidates are actually the most diverse?http://o.canada.com/news/male-pale-and-stale-which-partys-candidates-are-actually-the-most-diverse
http://o.canada.com/news/male-pale-and-stale-which-partys-candidates-are-actually-the-most-diverse#commentsWed, 21 May 2014 15:14:26 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=449673]]>The Ontario Progressive Conservatives and a labour organization are in a war of attack-ads accusing one another of working for the interests of old white dudes.

It started with a video from Working Families decrying Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak’s “old boys club.” It accuses the PCs of “destroying organizations that fight for gender equality,” among other policies they say will harm women and families. Although first released over a year ago, it’s now featured on the organization’s website.

Two days ago, the PCs retaliated, releasing their own video calling Working Families “male, pale and stale.”

“There’s a reason these men hide behind the name Working Families,” the voice-over says, “Because it looks like this organization that tries to scare women from voting PC is actually run by old white men.”

The PCs likely thought turning Working Families’ message back on itself was a clever tactic, but it also comes with a heavy dose of irony.

Canada.com combed through the candidates of the Ontario Liberals, PCs and New Democrats to see which party’s roster is the most diverse going into the election on June 12. The Liberals and PCs have both named all 107 candidates and the NDP have so far named 104, so our findings are being presented as percentages of named candidates.

As it turns out, it doesn’t get much more pale and male than the PC party.

The conservatives had the most prominent gender imbalance with women representing only 25 per cent of their candidates. The Liberals were somewhat more balanced with about 35 per cent and the NDP were the most equal with 42 per cent of their candidates being women.

It doesn’t get much more pale and male than the PC party.

In 24 of the 107 ridings, there are no female candidates declared. Conversely, there are six ridings with all-female candidates including Burlington, Dufferin-Caledon, Huron-Bruce, Kitchener-Waterloo, London North Centre and York-Simcoe.

The chart below shows the percentage of male and female candidates for each party.

Although women were greatly underrepresented, the racial diversity of the candidates better reflected Ontario’s population, though some fell shorter than others. In the 2011 census, approximately 30 per cent of Ontarians were described as visible minorities.

The Liberal party was closest to reflecting the number, with 24 per cent of their candidates being visible minorities. For the NDP, 19 per cent of declared candidates are visible minorities and the PCs trail with about 17 per cent representation.

Diversity was concentrated around the Greater Toronto Area, with nearly all the candidates for ridings in Scarborough and Brampton being people of colour. The Toronto downtown, though, is overwhelmingly white.

The further away from Toronto a riding is, the more likely it is to have all-white candidates. Even the Ottawa area only has three out of 14 candidates who are visible minorities.

The chart below shows the percentage of candidates who are people of colour for each party.

These bare-bones numbers don’t address other aspects of identity that are too-often underrepresented in politics, such as indigenous people, persons with disabilities or those from the LGBTQ community. What it does show is a common story across city councils and legislative assemblies across the country.

Although strides have been made in choosing candidates and electing politicians that more accurately reflect Canada’s population, there’s clearly more work to be done.

Methodology notes: The race of one Ontario PC candidate, Rod Fremlin for Sault Ste. Marie, could not be identified so he was not counted in the graph showing visible minorities. That chart does not count aboriginal candidates as visible minorities, which is in keeping with Statistics Canada’s definition of the term. In any case, there were few if any aboriginal candidates.

This story has been updated to include nine more NDP candidates, pushing their percentage of female candidates down from 46 per cent to 42 per cent.

-with files from William Wolfe-Wylie

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/male-pale-and-stale-which-partys-candidates-are-actually-the-most-diverse/feed3onelxnlaurenstrapaDen Tandt: Harper Tories would benefit from a Wynne winhttp://o.canada.com/news/harper-tories-would-benefit-from-a-wynne-win
http://o.canada.com/news/harper-tories-would-benefit-from-a-wynne-win#respondSun, 25 May 2014 18:33:45 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=451950]]>From its opening days the Ontario campaign has seen an unusual convergence of federal and provincial politics, with Ottawa Tories hammering Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne for her tax-and-spend ways, and Wynne enthusiastically bashing Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Saturday Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird campaigned for the Ontario Tories in Ottawa. It’s as though the federal and provincial wings of both the Conservative and Liberal parties have, for the time being, fused.

The irony is that, in both cases, melding is the last thing they need. Indeed it would be better for the federal Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, if Wynne were to lose the June 12 election. The federal Conservatives, meantime, will be in a stronger position next year if she wins. The reasons have to do with Ontario’s peculiar political culture, which abjures extremes while, somewhat paradoxically, voting for them in cycles, and the province’s heavyweight status at the federal ballot box.

The essential frame in Ontario politics, dating back to the Bill Davis years, is cantilevered, or counterweighted. So, for most of the Pierre Trudeau era federally, from 1968 until 1983 (with a nine-month break in 1979 to make room for Joe Clark), Davis held sway at Queen’s Park. Davis became premier in 1971 and remained in power until 1985.

After a five-month interval for doomed Conservative successor Frank Miller, Liberal David Peterson then took over as a minority premier – coinciding more or less with the accession federally of Conservative Brian Mulroney, in 1984. While Mulroney midwifed Canada-U.S. free trade and his finance ministers began to talk about curbing federal spending, Peterson offered quintessential “Big-L” Liberal policy, including pay equity and pension reform. Initially he was backed by the Bob Rae-led New Democrats. Peterson won a majority in 1987, taking 95 of 130 seats. A year later, Mulroney won his second majority.

And so it continued, the left-right see-saw, with Rae’s NDP roosting at Queen’s Park from 1990 to ’95, racking up enormous deficits and putting the province’s economy on life support, while in Ottawa the Chretien Liberals inherited and pursued signature Mulroney fiscally conservative policies – North American Free Trade, the deficit-busting GST, and debt reduction – with greater vigour and success than the Conservatives had.

Briefly, a time of austerity in Ottawa coincided with a sharp right turn in Toronto, with the rise of Conservative Mike Harris in 1995. But it wasn’t long before the federal Liberals, having slain the federal deficit in 1998, began “reinvesting” in government. That created a classic Ontario federal Liberal-provincial Conservative bifurcation until 2003. That year, of course, marked the accession of Dalton McGuinty to the premiership. A year later, Harper began his inexorable rise in Ottawa, first holding Liberal Paul Martin to a minority, then defeating him in 2006.

The pattern isn’t perfect: But it’s too consistent to be coincidental. It’s also logical. Put simply, when the country veers right, middle-of-the-road Ontarians tend to push Queen’s Park leftward, and vice versa. This may explain, at least in part, why the Ontario Liberals are still in office, after 11 years of scandal, piled upon boondoggles, piled upon broken promises.

The current set of leaders and circumstances add new twists to the old pattern. Ontario Tory leader Tim Hudak, though ideologically hand-in-glove with his federal counterparts, is brand-wise distinct from them, because of his relative youth – he’s 46 – and because he hasn’t yet held power, and so can campaign on “hope and change,” which Harper of course can’t. Hudak’s nearest federal counterpart in this respect is Justin Trudeau, who is 42. The Harper Conservatives’ doppelganger? Of course it’s the Wynne Liberals. Though oil and water ideologically, these two parties are peas in a pod in terms of their life cycles.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks to the media at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

In Trudeau’s case there’s yet another element, which is his strategy to encompass the socially progressive left and fiscally conservative right in a straddle. For the strategy to succeed, the Liberals must be perceived as tight-fisted, in the Paul Martin-John Manley tradition. That doesn’t square well with Wynne’s brand of Liberalism, which is somewhere left of where Bob Rae’s NDP stood in 1993-’94. Yet the two parties are organizationally joined at the hip; they share ground teams in most Ontario ridings.

It boils down to this: Should Hudak become premier June 12 and remain premier through 2015, momentum for change will get a boost; Ontarians will feel liberated, possibly, to consider options other than the Tories federally; and Ontario Liberal ground teams will turn all their energies to getting the federal liberals elected. Should the profligate Wynne remain premier, by the same token, the Harper Conservatives will retain their best case for another term, which is that someone familiar with a balance sheet must remain in charge, somewhere, lest the country borrow and spend itself to rack and ruin.

It is a curious state of affairs, to say the least – made more so by the fact that none of the players can afford to admit a jot of it is true.

TORONTO — Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s attempts to make the party more business friendly — and electable — are alienating the party base, which is why some core New Democrats are complaining loudly about her campaign for the province’s June 12 election, political analysts said.

“They’re upset that the NDP is talking about the middle class not about the working class,” said University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman.

“You can see it in some NDP circles where people are not terribly enthused.”

In the strongest signal yet that Horwath is losing the support of some of the party faithful, she received an open letter Friday from 34 current and former New Democrats — some well-known within the party — who said they were “angry” that she did not support the Liberal budget on May 1, triggering an election.

Calling it “the most progressive budget in recent Ontario history,” they wrote: “From what we can see you are running to the right of the Liberals in an attempt to win Conservative votes. It is not clear whether you have given up on progressive voters or you are taking them for granted.”

The group went on to say that they were “seriously considering not voting NDP” this time.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath. Darren Calabrese/National Post

Horwath’s campaign has pointed out that the New Democrats have gone from 10 seats in the legislature to 21 under her leadership.
When asked about the letter Saturday, Horwath would only say that her party is “very democratic” and “people have a right to voice their opinions.”

The NDP leader said her party’s platform reflects the concerns of voters and they are the ones who will make the call come election day.

Professor Henry Jacek of McMaster University in Hamilton said Horwath angered some NDP supporters by offering tax cuts to small businesses to offset a promised hike in the minimum wage to $12 an hour. They also didn’t approve of her decision to purchased a front-page ‘wrap-around’ ad in the Toronto Sun, which is not known for its support of New Democrat values, he added.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath speaks to the media at a news conference at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Friday, June 15, 2012.

“I’ve got a lot of calls from New Democrats who are really upset at (her) trying to go after people I’d call working class Tories, the people who read the Toronto Sun,” said Jacek. “I see New Democrats asking ‘Why the hell is she advertising in the Toronto Sun?’

That’s a right-wing, neo-conservative, populist newspaper, so that’s confused a lot of traditional New Democrats.”

Horwath’s decision to trigger an election also did not sit well with some union leaders, who considered the Liberal budget very labour and NDP friendly.

The Liberals clearly designed the budget to force the NDP’s hand, said Wiseman.

“My assessment is the Liberals were determined to have an election … and introduced an NDP-friendly budget to put the NDP’s back up against the wall,” he said.

Horwath also faced criticism early in the campaign for appearing wooden during her announcements, frequently using a tele-prompter to make sure she didn’t stray from her prepared remarks.

She gained more confidence as the campaign progressed, and by the time the NDP released their platform May 22, Horwath spoke mostly off the cuff, using only some notes for support as she dropped jokes and one-liners while pacing back and forth in front of her audience and the TV cameras.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath walks past her bus at a campaign stop in Toronto on Wednesday. Horwath has proposed holding a series of five televised leaders’ debates during Ontario’s election campaign.

The political analysts said the NDP needs to work quickly to try and convince traditional New Democrats — especially powerful labour leaders — that Horwath is not abandoning the party’s core values to try and get elected.

“Wynne had a lot of things in the budget that union leaders liked, and they’re worried about (Progressive Conservative Leader Tim) Hudak and his pledge to cut public sector workers, and in a sense it’s getting late in the day for Andrea at this point,” said Jacek.

Wiseman also questioned whether the NDP can get the unions back onside in time for election day.

“My sense is that the NDP might very well lose seats compared to the last election, or to where they’re sitting right now in the legislature,” he said. “The unions are now lining up behind the Liberals.”

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath speaks to a full house prior to NDP candidate for Ottawa South Bronwyn Funiciello’s candidacy victory over Wali Farah at the NDP Ottawa South nomination meeting on July 6, 2013.

Wiseman also wondered why Horwath waited nearly three weeks into the campaign to release the NDP’s platform, which mirrored the Liberal budget in many areas, including transit funding, a caregiver tax credit and promises of a cut in auto insurance rates.
“Hudak’s been campaigning for years … and the Liberals have been setting the stage,” he said. “The NDP were very late off the mark.”

Jacek feels Horwath made a mistake when she started following Hudak’s lead in question period this spring by attacking the Liberals over the cancellation of two gas plants and other scandals instead of focusing on the needs of ordinary voters.

“She started going into the scandals, and they’re really a Tim Hudak issue, not an NDP issue,” he said. “She essentially changed strategy this year and I don’t think it’s worked out the way they thought it would work out.”

Another challenge for the New Democrats will be convincing people not to adopt so-called strategic voting — voting for the Liberals to block the Conservatives from forming the next government. But Horwath’s claim she triggered the election because the Liberals can’t be trusted isn’t winning over everyone, said Wiseman.

“A problem with the NDP’s message in this campaign is it’s saying that you can’t count on what the Liberals are promising,” he said. “Well, the rhetorical question is: what’s changed in the past year? How come you supported them a year ago on the budget? Didn’t all those things apply then?”

It’ll also be hard for Horwath to be heard as the Liberals and Tories battle over Hudak’s headline-grabbing plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs to help balance the budget by 2016, a year earlier than the two other parties, said Jacek.

“The Liberals are going to keep saying that’s the wrong way to go, while Hudak believes it’s the right way to go, and that basically just squeezes out the NDP, and there’s not much she can do about it at this point,” he said.

The NDP should focus on helping the people who need it most, said Jacek.

“If I were advising her, I’d say emphasize that you have the best policy and strongest policy of all three parties on minimum wage,” he said. “That has a lot of traction with a lot of people.”

Both Jacek and Wiseman said Horwath needs to come up with a strong performance in the June 3 leaders’ debate after getting off to a “rough start” in the campaign.

“Andrea Horwath may come across as the superstar in the debate,” said Wiseman. “That could swing things.”

— with files from Paola Loriggio and Will Campbell

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/ndp-confusing-core-support-in-campaign-for-june-12-ontario-election/feed1Andrea HorwaththecanadianpresshorwathOntario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath speaks to the media at a news conference at Queen's Park in Toronto on Friday, June 15, 2012.NDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, speaks with Gilles Bisson, right, after Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa delivers the 2014 budget at Queen's Park in Toronto on Thursday, May 1, 2014.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath walks past her bus at a campaign stop in Toronto on Wednesday. Horwath has proposed holding a series of five televised leaders' debates during Ontario's election campaign.Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath speaks to a full house prior to NDP candidate for Ottawa South Bronwyn Funiciello's candidacy victory over Wali Farah at the NDP Ottawa South nomination meeting on July 6, 2013.Ontario budgetThe great Senate fight: Vanished, without a tracehttp://o.canada.com/news/the-great-senate-fight-vanished-without-a-trace
http://o.canada.com/news/the-great-senate-fight-vanished-without-a-trace#commentsThu, 22 May 2014 18:18:21 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=450583]]>It is stunning, in a way, the degree to which the Great Senate Crisis has dropped off the edge of Planet Ottawa in the past month. For a year we spoke of little else. Now it’s just gone. There’s still NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, tilting desultorily at the odd windmill, insisting that, yes he can abolish the red chamber. But he doesn’t really believe it. The Tories and Liberals, meantime, avert their gaze, presumably based on the logic it’s best to avoid what you can’t fix.

Except, here’s the irony: They could fix it, in meaningful ways, if they chose to. The three major parties could do that tomorrow. But even the Grits, who got the ball rolling in January by liberating their senators, appear to have lost stomach for the fight. The Senate scandal sparked a drive for reform that briefly turned Ottawa inside out. Now, with the marvellous excuse of the Supreme Court serving as ballast, we’re back to status quo ante, or so it would seem.

It was a newspaper article by former provincial Liberal MPP Greg Sorbara, published a year ago, that first got Trudeau and his people thinking about reforms that could be effected without igniting a new constitutional round. At the height of the furor over the Wright-Duffy affair, Sorbara proposed in a Toronto Star op-ed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper could “give up the divine right of prime ministers to make Senate appointments and, more important, he could take steps to delink the Senate from the partisan structure that is the organizational basis of the House of Commons.”

Sorbara envisioned a 20-member appointments committee, made up of “respected members of the Order of Canada. It would be the responsibility of the Governor General, using a lens of diversity regarding the Order of Canada cohort, to populate the members of such a committee from time to time.” Existing senators would serve out their time. But as new vacancies appeared, the new system would take effect. Sorbara proposed a term limit of six years, renewable for another six.

Of course, much of the detail of his thinking was blown out of the water April 25, when the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision on what standards must be met, under the Constitution, for reform or abolition. Boiled down, the Supremes said nyet, nada, zilch: You can’t elect senators or impose term limits without approval from seven provinces comprising at least 50 per cent of the population, and you can’t abolish without unanimous provincial consent. Oh yes, and the PM’s right — we may as well call it a responsibility, now — to appoint senators is sacrosanct.

Harper immediately folded his tent, setting aside a founding purpose of the Reform Party as though it were yesterday’s leftovers. Mulcair growled it would be abolition or bust regardless, which is just another way of signalling real reform is out of reach. And the Trudeau Liberals indicated, initially at least, that they felt vindicated. Trudeau’s “liberating” of 32 Senate Liberals in January was not without its hitches — chief among them that senators in question did not want to be set free — but the basic frame of the Sorbara plan, formal non-partisanship, is in place in seed form, in one party. All that remains is to develop an appointments system that lifts partisan politics from the equation, and replaces it with merit.

Is such a thing even possible, given the SCC ruling? To a degree, no. The PM’s formal role can only be altered under the 7/50 provision. Any kind of formal arms-length selection process — say a multi-partisan Commons Senate appointments committee, charged with providing the PM with a list of gender-balanced names from across industry, the arts, commerce, academia and aboriginal Canada — would require changing the Constitution.

Except, possibly — and here’s where the choice to fight on, or not, comes in — if the process were to remain informal, and did not confer any structural obligation on future prime ministers. “An (appointments) committee might be possible if the PM retains final say,” University of Waterloo constitutional scholar Emmett Macfarlane wrote to me recently, “and doesn’t try to formalize it in a law in a way that binds future PMs to the process.”

So here’s how it could look, in theory: Realizing the status quo is unacceptable, and that reform through constitutional wrangling is undesirable, the PM could, first, follow the Liberal lead, and let his people go; and second, strike a committee of trusted voices, non-partisan or multi-partisan, to offer suggestions for filling the nine current vacancies — one for each of B.C. and Quebec, two for each of Manitoba and Nova Scotia, three for Ontario. In other words, he could apply Bismarck’s dictum that “politics is the art of the possible,” and do what he can, now.

The fact that he won’t, and that no one in his or any other party can even be bothered to ask him to, says volumes about the current state of play in Ottawa. And none of it is good.

Wynne was campaigning today at a farm in southwestern Ontario where she promised new funding for the agriculture sector if the Liberals win the June 12 election.

She drove a red tractor down a muddy lane on the farm to a waiting bank of journalists and cameras, with farm owner Sandra Vos sitting next to her.

Tractor safety guidelines say drivers should not have any passengers, and not long after Wynne’s announcement ended the Progressive Conservatives sent out a news release saying Wynne “set a very bad example.”

Ontario’s Conservatives went on the attack after Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne drove a tractor with instruction from farmer Sandra Vos (right). THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

The Tories cited Health and Safety Guidelines for Ontario Tobacco Producers that farm tractors have killed 250 people on Ontario farms in a “recent fifteen year period,” many of them were the result of extra passengers falling off.

Wynne has not responded to the Tories’ criticism, but many Twitter users posted a similar photo of PC Leader Tim Hudak sitting on a tractor — with another man standing next to him.

When asked about the Hudak photo, which was taken last year at an agriculture event, the Tories responded that the tractor in that photo wasn’t moving.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/wild-thing-ontario-premier-kathleen-wynne-faces-dangerous-tractor-driving-accusations/feed0Kathleen-Wynne-Sandra-Vos.jpgthecanadianpressOntario's Conservatives went on the attack after Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne drove a tractor with instruction from farmer Sandra Vos (right). THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank GunnPC Leader Tim Hudak promises judicial inquiry on cancelled Toronto gas plantshttp://o.canada.com/news/pc-leader-tim-hudak-promises-judicial-inquiry-on-cancelled-toronto-gas-plants
Sun, 18 May 2014 23:12:01 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=448135]]>MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is promising a judicial inquiry into the contentious cancellation of two Toronto-area gas plants, going after the Liberals on a scandal that dominated the last provincial election three years ago.

Hudak’s pledge — which he has made in months past — was reiterated Sunday at the site of one of the cancelled plants in Mississauga, Ont., where unfinished concrete pillars and tangled rusting metal rods could be seen behind him.

“A billion dollars went into this hole,” he said. “This was a deliberate decision knowing the costs of the cancellation. Knowing it was going to cost us more, doing so just to save a Liberal seat during an election campaign. That’s wrong.”

The Liberals scrapped the unpopular gas-fired power plant in Mississauga during the 2011 election and another in neighbouring Oakville in October 2010, at a cost of what the auditor general has said could be up to $1.1 billion.

PC Leader Tim Hudak walks past the 800-megawatt gas-fired power plant scrapped by the previous Liberal administration, after talking to the press in Mississauga. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)

Construction on the Mississauga plant continued for weeks after the last election, but the decision to cancel it helped save five Liberal seats in the area.

A legislative committee had been probing the cancellations until the current election campaign began, and there is also an ongoing police investigation into the deletion of emails and documents about the unpopular plants, but that’s not enough, said Hudak.

“We have to send a very strong signal to governments of any political stripe, that this kind of behaviour just won’t be tolerated in the province of Ontario,” he said.

“If we want to give investors confidence to invest, if we want to give taxpayers some confidence that they’re not going to see this abuse, we need a judicial inquiry.”

Premier Kathleen Wynne has apologized for the way the gas plants issue was handled and has said her predecessor Dalton McGuinty, under whose watch the plants were scrapped, made “mistakes.”

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks to the media after calling a provincial election at the Ontario Legislature. (Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

But Hudak scoffed at that defence.

“A mistake is like when you get a parking ticket. This was not a mistake, this was a deliberate abuse of your tax dollars to save Liberal seats,” he said. “We need to draw a line and say this is not going to happen again.”

The Liberals have pointed out that Hudak said during the last election campaign that he would scrap the Mississauga plant if he formed the next government.

They also took a jab at the Tories’ energy policies on Sunday, saying Hudak has failed to learn from their cancellation decisions and alleged a Progressive Conservative government would rack up millions in costs by scrapping certain renewable energy projects.

“He wants to cancel renewable energy contracts,” said Liberal MPP Brad Duguid. “What that’s going to do is cost potentially tens of billions of dollars, 20 times more than the gas plants cost us.”

The Tories have pledged to replace subsidies for wind and solar power, which they estimate will save $20 billion a year, and invest in nuclear, natural gas and hydro power.

They’ve said it would be up to the energy minister to decide whether to proceed with large scale wind and solar contracts that have been approved but aren’t yet producing energy, but any project that is cancelled would end under existing contract termination clauses.

Meanwhile, the New Democrats repeated their call for a public inquiry on the gas plants on Sunday, saying it’s something they’ve long been committed to seeing through.

“Frankly we saw Liberals over the last number of months and year not being upfront and honest with Ontarians about who knew what and when,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in Toronto.

“I still believe there are answers that people need in terms of the coverup as well as the gas plant cancellation decision itself.”

Ontarians cast their ballots on June 12.

]]>Tim Hudakthecanadianpress PC Leader Tim Hudak walks past the 800-megawatt gas-fired power plant scrapped by the previous Liberal administration, after talking to the press in Mississauga on Sunday May 18 , 2014. Hudak continues his election campaign. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks to the media after calling a provincial election at the Ontario Legislature on Friday. Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESSBaloney Meter: Is Ontario really facing a retirement-savings crisis?http://o.canada.com/news/baloney-meter-is-ontario-really-facing-a-retirement-savings-crisis
Thu, 15 May 2014 11:49:22 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=446314]]>“There’s pretty much wide agreement among leadership across the country that there is a real problem and that people in their 20s and 30s and 40s are not saving enough. One of the things that we can do as government, and I believe is our responsibility, is to put in place a structure that allows people to save so that they don’t have to retire in financial insecurity — which is exactly what is confronting us right now.

“It is a crisis. It is a crisis that is confronting us and if we don’t deal with it now then we will be in trouble down the road.”

— Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, May 12

——

OTTAWA — The Ontario Retirement Pension Plan is a showpiece of the Liberals’ re-election campaign platform. The proposal calls for a mandatory program in which workers contribute 1.9 per cent of their annual income (up to $90,000), matched by their employers.

Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne says the Ontario pension plan is needed to address a looming retirement-savings crisis. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper and members of his Conservative government have panned the Ontario Liberals’ plan, saying people favour tax breaks as an incentive to save for retirement. The federal Tories also argue it would hurt the economy, still wobbly from the global financial meltdown, if workers and employers are forced to contribute to an Ontario pension plan.

So, is there a retirement-savings crisis?

Spoiler alert: The Canadian Press Baloney Meter is a dispassionate examination of political statements that culminates in a ranking of accuracy. On a scale of “no baloney” to “full of baloney” (complete methodology below).

This one earns a rating of some baloney. Here’s why.

The Facts

First, let’s take a quick look at the proposed Ontario Retirement Pension Plan. The 2014 Ontario budget estimates the contributions from workers and employers would be about $3.5 billion a year. An arm’s-length board would be responsible for investing that money.

A worker with an annual salary of $90,000 would contribute about $1,643 to the plan, which their employer would match. In return, that person could expect a benefit of up to $12,815, indexed to inflation, when he or she retires. The plan would start in 2017.

If Canada Pension Plan payments are included, that person would receive combined benefits of up to $25,275 annually for life.

Next, let’s look at retirement savings in Canada — specifically, if there is indeed a crisis.

The Oxford English dictionary defines a crisis as “a time of intense difficulty or danger” and “a time when a difficult or important decision must be made.”

Is that the case here? Let’s consider Statistics Canada poverty data.

Poverty among the elderly has dropped sharply since the mid-1970s. Statistics Canada’s low-income measure — the most commonly used standard for comparing countries to each other — shows the low-income rate among seniors was 30.6 per cent in 1976. That was the first year people aged 65 were eligible for full public pensions.

The low-income measure fell to a low of 3.7 per cent in 1995. It rose to 11.5 per cent in 2009, the last year for which Statistics Canada data are available.

The drop in the number of seniors living in poverty has widely been attributed to the introduction of the Canada Pension Plan and Quebec Pension Plan in 1966 (full pensions were not available until a decade later), along with Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.

So while the low-income measure has risen from the lows of the mid-1990s, fewer seniors are living in poverty today than they were in the 1970s, although the number seems to be on the rise again.

Using the poverty line to determine whether the current crop of seniors are in the middle of a retirement-savings crisis is perhaps a crude measure, but it offers at least one basic indication of the state of their finances.

Turning away from only seniors now, let’s look at how Ontarians both young and old are saving for retirement.

The Ontario government says people are saving far less now than they were in the early 1980s. In 1982, Ontarians saved 22.7 per cent of their disposable income — an all-time high for the province.

That number fell steadily until it hit a historic low in 2005, when people were saving only 1.7 per cent of their disposable income. As of last year, Ontarians were putting 4.7 per cent of their extra cash into savings.

The Ontario numbers are in line with the national picture.

By that measure, it would seem that people are saving less money for retirement than they used to. Precisely how much is not certain, since the household savings rate does not specify if the money is being put away for retirement or for any other purposes.

What the experts say

Pension expert Malcolm Hamilton of the C.D. Howe Institute says the household savings rate is an often-cited source, but doesn’t tell the full story.

Canadians contributed $35.7 billion to registered retirement savings plans, according to Statistics Canada data from 2012. That was higher than the year before, and is part of an upward trend going back to at least 2000.

So why has the savings rate fallen if people are putting more money into retirement savings plans?

Hamilton says it’s because the savings rate treats all withdrawals from retirement savings plans — including all pensions paid from public-sector plans — as negative savings. So while Canadians are putting more aside for retirement, he says, they’re also collecting more from retirement savings plans. The increased benefit payments have the effect of neutralizing the increased contributions.

Another factor to consider is the investment income earned on the plans themselves, Hamilton said.

“Now the investment returns on the accumulated savings are lower than they used to be,” he said. “And that’s the thing, more than anything else, that’s dragging the savings rate down.”

The household savings rate also doesn’t factor in capital gains and losses, Hamilton added — so if interest rates go down and people shift their savings into stocks, none of the capital gains count.

Keith Ambachtsheer, a finance professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, agrees the household savings rate omits important information, such as capital gains.

He also agrees there’s no retirement-savings crisis at the moment. That said, Ambachtsheer says he sees no harm in Ontario setting up its own pension plan.

Susan Eng of CARP, an advocacy group that represents older people, says describing the current situation as a crisis is probably too strong, but adds there is an urgent public policy issue that should be addressed.

Fewer and fewer private-sector workplaces are offering their employees pension plans, she notes. That leaves people with fewer options to save for their retirement.

“Then, the question becomes: how do people who have average skills in finances save for their own retirement?” Eng said.

The verdict

The experts agree that there is no retirement-savings crisis — at least for now.

They acknowledge that no one really knows what the economy will look like in the future, and it’s certainly possible another global downturn could wipe out people’s retirement savings.

But at the moment, while people could always be saving more money, the experts say Ontarians don’t find themselves in the middle of a crisis.

For this reason, Wynne’s claim has some baloney.

Methodology:

The Baloney Meter is a project of The Canadian Press that examines the level of accuracy in statements made by politicians. Each claim is researched and assigned a rating based on the following scale:

No baloney — the statement is completely accurate

A little baloney — the statement is mostly accurate but more information is required

Some baloney — the statement is partly accurate but important details are missing

A lot of baloney — the statement is mostly inaccurate but contains elements of truth

The budget included left-wing-friendly promises for a provincial pension plan, levies to raise billions of dollars for public transit, roads and bridges, billions more for corporate grants, a minimum wage hike and higher taxes for individuals earning more than $150,000.

But Horwath said she had lost confidence in Wynne and the province’s minority Liberal government and couldn’t prop up a government that has been the focus of scandal after scandal.

Horwath’s announcement that the NDP would not be voting for the budget sent Wynne to the lieutenant governor to ask him to dissolve the legislature and call an election.

Sousa said at a press conference Saturday that Horwath’s decision raised the prospect of a “radical” Progressive Conservative government led by Tim Hudak.

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak speaks during a press conference to announce that he would consider the privatization of the Ontario lottery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Monday, December 3, 2012.

He spoke of the “terrible choice made by Andrea Horwath and the alternative, which is more of a scare, and that would be Tim Hudak.”

“The Hudak PC’s agenda for cuts and labour wars gets more radical and more dangerous by the day,” Sousa said.

Sousa criticized Hudak’s plan, unveiled Friday, to cut 100,000 public sector jobs as a way to help eliminate the $12.5-billion deficit by 2016, saying it’s contrary to his pledge to create jobs.

Hudak announced Saturday that he would create 120,000 new jobs in Ontario by reducing corporate taxes by 30 per cent. The Progressive Conservative leader has said he would create one million jobs in Ontario over eight years, and is adamant his plan to cut public sector jobs would spur job creation in the private sector — though just how that would come about wasn’t immediately detailed.

The Liberals’ main adversary in this campaign is not Hudak nor Horwath, rather it’s both, Sousa said.

“The extreme Tea Party thinking that’s about to destroy many parts of other parts of the world, creating the damage that it has, is not to be accepted in this province because we want to be positive,” he said.

“We want to be progressive. Nor can we have reckless spending and tax hikes, because that’s what Andrea Horwath has also proposed in the past. We must be dynamic. We must be competitive. We must find that right balance.”

The new 30-second ad, voiced by Wynne, is now out online and will be broadcast on traditional media starting May 21, once a political advertising blackout ends.

]]>HorwaththecanadianpressOntario Liberal leader Kathleen WynneOntario PC Leader Tim Hudak speaks during a press conference to announce that he would consider the privatization of the Ontario lottery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Monday, December 3, 2012.Resolved: that leaders’ debates shouldn’t be just an awkward afterthoughthttp://o.canada.com/news/resolved-that-leaders-debates-shouldnt-be-just-an-awkward-afterthought
http://o.canada.com/news/resolved-that-leaders-debates-shouldnt-be-just-an-awkward-afterthought#respondThu, 08 May 2014 00:45:46 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=442553]]>A few days into the Ontario election campaign, the major issues are already starting to emerge. There’s the critical issue of foreign models being used in place of Ontarians in campaign advertisements. There are the many important questions raised by the staging of an opposition campaign event in a factory that — whoops! — benefited from government support policies. And of course there are the usual meat-and-potato issues of any election, the kinds of things that voters invariably find helpful in clarifying the choices before them — things like gaffes, and photo-ops, and polls, and attack ads, and endless, endless discussions of strategy.

We’re doing it again, in other words: we, the politicians and the pollsters and the strategists and the media, the whole godforsaken, incestuous, bathwater-drinking political class, the people whose combined exertions over many years have succeeded in driving turnout in provincial elections below 50 per cent. You wanted an election about issues, you hapless Ontario voters? You’re getting a campaign about a campaign, same as always.

But wait. One of the party leaders, the NDP’s Andrea Horwath, has challenged her rivals to a series of five televised debates, each devoted to a different issue. She suggested the economy could be the subject of one, and it wouldn’t be hard to come up with a list of some other issues that might benefit from an in-depth exploration of the parties’ differences: accountability, certainly, given the many scandals to erupt on the Liberals’ watch, but also taxes, deficits, pensions, transit, health care. If they held the first one next week, they could have one a week for the rest of the campaign. We might experiment with different formats: maybe one organized as a series of one-on-one encounters, another giving the leaders a full 10 minutes each to argue their positions, possibly even a …

I know. I know. It’s not going to happen. For Horwath’s proposal to come to pass the other leaders would have to agree, and since both the Liberals and the Conservatives lead the NDP by several points in the polls, why would they? The Liberal leader, Kathleen Wynne, craftily offered to participate in as many debates as the networks would allow. But since the networks have no interest in holding any — all that prime time, with no commercials? — that means we will have as few as they can possibly get away with. If history is any guide, they’ll probably saw it off at one or two, with the networks’ star correspondents prominently displayed and the Greens carefully excluded. The format will be execrable, the leaders will be over-caffeinated, the media will complain of the lack of “knock-out blows,” and another opportunity will have been wasted.

Why do we do this? Why, particularly, do we leave the organization of debates up to last-minute, ad hoc negotiations among the parties and the networks, each with an obvious, and massive, vested interest? Televised election debates have been part of the electoral landscape in North America for more than 50 years. They have played a critical, even decisive part in any number of campaigns, from the 1984 and 1988 federal elections to the last Quebec provincial election. Yet we persist in treating them as some sort of novelty, as if they’d only just been invented.

Elections are quintessentially public events. As such their rules and practices are generally encoded in law, in the interest of transparency, predictability and — ideally — fairness to all. The election laws of Canada and the provinces run to hundreds of pages, covering everything from how candidates are nominated to how parties raise funds to the kind of paper used in the ballots. The debates are the outstanding exception. For all their importance to the public interest, they remain essentially private affairs, their number, format, rules and so on made up each time on the fly, and in the back rooms. This is more than an anomaly. It’s a scandal.

If we were serious about these things, we would entrench the debates in law, well in advance of any particular election. Without knowing who would be ahead or behind in the polls on that far-off day, there would be no incentive to favour the position of one party or another. Rather than bargaining for the networks’ participation, it could be made a condition of licence (with appropriate compensation). That would open the way for something similar to Horwath’s proposal: a series of weekly debates. No longer an awkward afterthought, the debates would become the spine of the campaign.

Nothing rivals the debates for close, sustained, unmediated scrutiny of the leaders. How well does a candidate understand his or her platform? How well can he explain it? Can she think on her feet? How does he react under pressure? Is she confident, and can she inspire confidence in others? What comes out in unguarded moments, when they are pushed off their message-tracks, is often more revealing than anything else.

More important, perhaps, than what the debates contain is what they would replace. An election organized around a series of weekly debates would leave less room for the meaningless tripe with which the candidates, and the media, now fill their days. Instead of gaffes and photo-ops, we’d be talking, and writing, about what’s at stake in the next debate, and what emerged from the last. With more debates, there would be less of a prize-fight atmosphere surrounding each. Knowing they would have a chance to recover from a bad performance, and with more time to explore each issue, candidates would be less constrained to speak in over-rehearsed soundbites. We might actually learn something.

It would be great, in short, if the other party leaders and the networks were to take up Horwath on her proposal. But it really shouldn’t be up to them.

Postmedia News

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/resolved-that-leaders-debates-shouldnt-be-just-an-awkward-afterthought/feed0Andrea HorwathandrewcoyneThree reasons why Ontario is doomedhttp://o.canada.com/news/three-reasons-why-ontario-is-doomed
http://o.canada.com/news/three-reasons-why-ontario-is-doomed#respondSun, 04 May 2014 19:26:15 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=440403]]>Ah, for the moral clarity of the Quebec election campaign, in which there was one reasonable choice and a cluster of options representing different shades of awful. Easy! But in Ontario, as we embark on 40 days and 40 nights of penance for our sins, culminating in an election June 12, there is no such clarity. There is instead the overlap of lousy, to uninspired, to unbelievable.

Here then, are three reasons why Ontario is doomed.

1. The “new” Liberal government is no different from the “old” Liberal government.

Premier Kathleen Wynne was tainted from the get-go by Dalton McGuinty’s billion-dollar gas-plant scandal; by his shutdown of the Ontario legislature, to avoid a vote of non-confidence; and by the near-endless cascade, stretching back an incredible 11 years, of scandals, profligacy, egregious waste and broken promises, all delivered in the unctuous, falsely sincere tones of Ward Cleaver chiding his young sons for knocking each other over the head.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, takes a sip of water while delivering the 2014 budget and is applauded by Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

Wynne had an opportunity to set a new course. Instead she offered, as an antidote to Premier Dad, Premier Mom. There would be no reversal of the Green Energy Act, with its skyrocketing hydro prices and 500-foot industrial wind turbines rammed down the throats of small towns and rural residents; and no reversal of McGuinty’s practice of buying off every problem with money borrowed against the province’s future. Wynne’s election budget is Exhibit A. This is not a chicken in every pot; it’s a fatted calf or a boar and the old pots are just too small.

There’s $29 billion for transit and roads; $11 billion for hospitals; $11 billion for schools, $2.5 billion for corporations; a new pension plan to save us from ourselves, and on, and on, a cornucopia of goodness for virtually everyone except smokers and individuals earning more than $150,000 a year, who really don’t deserve a present, do they? These are mostly 10-year commitments, rendering them meaningless – except that the new debt accrued will be real. The odds of this government hitting its balanced-budget target by 2017-18, amid this orgy of new spending, should it ever come to pass, are zero.

Budget books lay on the floor. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

2. Even so, Tim Hudak is struggling to connect.

It’s difficult to believe, given the Liberal record. But the Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s track record of self-sabotage is nearly as extraordinary as the Ontario government’s history of mismanagement. In 2007, Conservative John Tory had the wind in his sails but took a hatchet to his own campaign with a proposal to extend public funding to religious schools. In 2011 Hudak again blew a potentially winning hand by leading with an anti-immigrant cant that made him appear both foolish and intolerant.

And lo, here he is again, like the wind-up cowboy in Toy Story, rattling on about the “big union bosses” who rule Ontario with their gnarled, iron fists. UNIFOR, Canada’s largest private-sector union, urged NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to support the Wynne budget, as did Sid Ryan of the Ontario Federation of Labour. But that was a mere ruse. In fact, Hudak brilliantly theorized Friday, it was the “big government unions” who ordered Horwath to pull the plug. “And quite frankly, any province run by big government union bosses will end up deep in debt,” the CBC quotes him as saying.

Planet Earth calling Tim: You should avoid saying things that are wildly irrational. Also, the people who loathe unions reflexively are already voting for you and not, it’s safe to assume, Wynne, Horwath or the Greens. Many of those you need to win a plurality of votes are, in fact, progressive small-c conservatives, who do not recall the union wars of the Mike Harris years with fondness. So, it might be wise for you to ratchet back the union-bashing and talk about beer and wine in corner stores?

3. There’s a fair chance that we wind up, on the morning of June 13 or not long thereafter, with the status quo. A glance at the NDP’s website reveals that they are, as billed, in splendid harmony with the Wynne Liberals on every issue other than the niggling one of who holds power. As the campaign gets underway, Wynne and Hudak are tied in the low thirties in support, with Horwath about 10 points back, and Mike Schreiner’s Greens in single digits. Should the Liberals win a majority, it’ll be status quo; another Liberal minority, status quo; an NDP minority or majority, effectively status quo, as regards Ontario’s finances; and a Conservative minority, still more status quo, as such a government would be unstable and could be overturned at any time by a coalition of the other two.

A Progressive Conservative majority, if Hudak is true to his policy papers, would inject a desperately needed dose of fiscal sobriety into the mix. But a majority is precisely what Ontarians won’t give him, as long as he insists on casting himself as Mike Harris 2.0. It is, in a word, depressing, with the single note of optimism being this: As Quebec showed last month, everything can change during a campaign. Ontarians can only hope.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/three-reasons-why-ontario-is-doomed/feed0wynnemikedentandtOntario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, takes a sip of water while delivering the 2014 budget and is applauded by Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen's Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)Ontario budgetConservative leader Tim Hudak listens to Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, not shown deliver the 2014 budget next at Queen's Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette) NDP leader Andrea Horwath, left, speaks with Gilles Bisson, right, after Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa delivers the 2014 budget at Queen's Park in Toronto on Thursday, May 1, 2014.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette Wynne takes aim at Harper government in first day of Ontario election campaignhttp://o.canada.com/news/wynne-takes-aim-at-harper-government-in-first-day-of-ontario-election-campaign
Sat, 03 May 2014 17:14:56 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=440146]]>Will Campbell

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is fending off attacks from the Harper government in the first day of campaigning in the provincial election.

Wynne shot back Saturday, saying that if Harper isn’t willing to back the plan, he shouldn’t interfere.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks to the media at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

“The first choice would have been to have an improvement and enhancement to the Canada Pension Plan, but the federal government is not interested in doing that,” she said.

“So quite frankly I think that if Prime Minister Harper isn’t interested in partnering with us then he should move out of the way.”

Finance Minister Joe Oliver also weighed in on the issue Saturday, telling CBC that Wynne’s budget proposals would put the province on a “route to economic decline.”

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks to the media after calling a provincial election at the Ontario Legislature on Friday. Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Wynne’s response was to accuse the Harper government of balancing its books “on the backs of the people of Ontario” by cutting transfer payments for health and social spending — a long-standing point of contention between her minority Liberals and the federal government.

The province was plunged in a campaign for a June 12 election after the opposition parties said they had lost confidence in the minority Liberal government.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath started things rolling Friday by saying her party could no longer prop up a government plagued by scandal.

Horwath then announced she would vote with the Progressive Conservatives to defeat the budget.

Wynne decided not to let her government face weeks of criticism before the confidence vote on the budget, so she went to Lt.-Gov. David Onley and asked him to dissolve the legislature.

Wynne said Friday she wanted to see the budget passed in the legislature, but adds “it was Horwath and PC Leader Tim Hudak who decided it was time for an election.”

She said voters will have a choice between Liberal “safe hands and risky tactics” of the opposition parties.

The Liberal budget would improve people’s lives with a made-in-Ontario pension plan, billions for transit and transportation infrastructure and grants for businesses to create jobs, Wynne said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

“Quite frankly I thought there was a lot in the budget that would recommend itself to both the Tories and the NDP, but she made a different decision,” she said. “I think a lot is at risk.”

Horwath said she couldn’t trust the Liberals to keep all their budget promises.

“I cannot in good conscience support a government that people don’t trust anymore,” said Horwath. “This budget is not a solid plan for the future. It’s a mad dash to escape the scandals by promising the moon and the stars.”

Hudak said he has no qualms about taking his ideas to voters, which include lower corporate taxes and an across-the-board public sector wage freeze.

Horwath is hypocritical for taking so long to defeat the Liberals, which they should have done at least a year ago, he said in Ottawa.

“If you’re looking for who’s going to be the best actor on the stage, if you’re looking for someone who’s running a popularity contest by promising funding on all kinds of projects but they don’t have the cheques to cash in, well then vote for the Liberal leader or the NDP leader,” he said.

Several large labour groups, including the Unifor and the Ontario Federation of Labour, had urged the NDP to pass the budget and avoid an election, but public sector unions complained the fiscal plan puts jobs at risk.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union — which has been in a tough labour fight with the Liberals — said they support Horwath’s call to go to the polls.

]]>Ontario minimum wage going upthecanadianpressWynne, Ontario, HudakOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks to the media after calling a provincial election at the Ontario Legislature on Friday. Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESSOntario budgetCanadian Prime Minister Stephen HarperPlan for Ontario version of CPP looks like overkillhttp://o.canada.com/news/plan-for-ontario-version-of-cpp-looks-like-overkill
http://o.canada.com/news/plan-for-ontario-version-of-cpp-looks-like-overkill#commentsSat, 03 May 2014 00:10:03 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=439980]]>Once upon a time there was a Conservative government in Ontario with a minister named John Snobelen who was caught on video saying you needed to “invent a crisis” to get anything done in large organizations like governments. The ensuing controversy was much exploited by the Ontario Liberals.

Now it is 2014 and it is the Ontario Liberals who are inventing a crisis. No, not the fiscal crisis: That one’s real enough. I speak rather of the pension crisis, the alleged basis for the party’s proposed Ontario version of the Canada Pension Plan. You’ll be hearing lots about this: It was the centrepiece of this week’s provincial budget, will be hotly debated in the election campaign just begun, and if implemented will surely set a template for other provinces. Indeed, it’s the biggest expansion of the social safety net in decades. If only it were actually necessary.

The Ontario Retirement Pension Plan would cover some three million workers (the self-employed, those already enrolled in workplace pension plans, and those in federally regulated industries would be exempt). They would be required to contribute 1.9 per cent of their earnings up to $90,000, matched by their employers, in return for which they could expect benefits on retirement of up to $12,815 a year. The estimated $3.5 billion in annual levies would be invested through a state pension fund modelled on the CPP Investment Board.

Why can’t workers just save their own money and invest it themselves? Because, the Liberals say, they don’t. According to the budget, the province faces a problem of “undersaving.” The CPP and Old Age Security are “inadequate.” Two-thirds of workers don’t have a company pension plan. And “a significant portion” of them are “not saving enough.” The impression we are meant to absorb is of a province of future indigents, a prospect so dire as to justify conscripting everyone’s savings to avert it.

But wait a moment. How do we know Ontarians are not saving enough? Why is the CPP, hailed as a major advance when it was introduced in 1966, no longer adequate? To be sure, the program was only designed to replace 25 per cent of pre-retirement earnings, but that was in the days before Registered Retirement Savings Plans and other private savings vehicles. If anything, you’d expect to find people better placed for retirement than before, not worse.

And, in fact, they are. Poverty among the elderly, once widespread, is now lower than for the general population. Of course, what we are talking about here is income replacement, rather than income support: maintaining yourself in something of the same living standard in retirement as you enjoyed while working. But viewed in those terms, the picture is not hugely dissimilar.

Costs are lower in retirement, and time is freer; consequently, experts advise a replacement ratio of somewhere between 50 and 70 per cent of earnings should suffice. A study by economists Kevin Milligan and Tammy Schirle, though broadly sympathetic to the idea of an expanded public pension plan, finds that virtually every household in the bottom fifth of the income scale meets or exceeds the 50-per-cent threshold, while for those in the next quintile it is only slightly less.

It’s as you move higher that you find more people falling short, and then only where neither spouse has a workplace pension: from 24 per cent in the middle quintile rising to 39 per cent in the topmost (the corresponding rates are roughly half as much for households where one or both spouses have pensions). Overall, we are talking about roughly one in six households, almost all of them in the upper half of the income distribution.

That’s among current retirees. Are things likely to grow worse for future generations? Milligan and Schirle see no evidence of it. Pension plan coverage, already “higher now than ever in Canadian history,” is rising among workers in their 20s and stable for those in their 30s. Where it has declined is among those in their 40s and 50s, those most affected by the bleak 1990s, when many private-sector plans were closed.

So we have a problem concentrated among older, mid-to-upper-income workers, not a generalized crisis. Even here, the numbers of those “undersaving” may be overstated: The former chief economist for Statistics Canada, Philip Cross, argues in a recent paper that studies on the issue typically ignore savings held outside traditional pension vehicles: non-RRSP stock portfolios, for example, or the equity in people’s houses.

To the extent there’s a savings problem among a certain subset of the population, it’s not clear the answer is to compel everyone to save more. For that matter, it’s not clear that you can: There is evidence that mandating higher savings through CPP-style plans simply leads people to save less in other ways. And even if it were decided to go the forced-saving route — the next generation of workers, after all, will have to pay for not only their own pensions, but their parents’ — it is far from clear why it must all be put in one giant fund under state control.

Beyond the simple systemic risk of putting all one’s eggs in one investment manager’s basket, there is the ever-present risk of politicization. The Liberals insist the plan would operate “at arm’s length” from government. But that doesn’t mean it would be wholly free to invest for the highest return, rather than supplying captive capital for local interests: Quebec’s Caisse de Dépôt offers a troubling precedent. Consider, in this light, this passage from the budget: “By unlocking value from its assets and encouraging more Ontarians to save through a proposed new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, new pools of capital would be available for Ontario-based projects such as building roads, bridges and new transit.” (Emphasis added.)

I don’t want to say there’s no problem here. But surely there are more targeted, less coercive solutions: for example, adding a mandatory layer to the existing voluntary RRSP system (ideally restricted to investing in low-cost index funds) or the Pooled Registered Savings Plans the province is also introducing. The Caisse d’Ontario looks like overkill.

Postmedia News

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/plan-for-ontario-version-of-cpp-looks-like-overkill/feed10.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000Kathleen WynneandrewcoyneOntario budgetOntario budgetOntario budget sets stage for clash over who can tax, spend, and borrow the mosthttp://o.canada.com/news/ontario-budget-sets-stage-spending-spree
http://o.canada.com/news/ontario-budget-sets-stage-spending-spree#respondThu, 01 May 2014 22:21:01 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=438989]]>TORONTO — On the way into the Ontario budget lockup, you passed through no fewer than half a dozen police checks: uniformed cops, with guns, bulletproof vests, the works. You’d have thought you were entering NATO central command. All this, for a budget whose contents were already known to everyone.

Which gives you something of the surreal flavour of the whole event. Not only had the budget been leaked, steadily, for weeks, but in all likelihood it will never be implemented, assuming the government falls over it. One can’t be sure, of course: the NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, whose decision it is to make, declined to offer any comment. On the budget. On budget day. That, too, gives you a flavour of the proceedings.

And yet, as strange as the whole thing was, there was at the same time a strong sense of the familiar. Why yes: reading the budget, one was taken back to the last days of the Bob Rae government, two decades ago — that same feeling that those in charge had no real grasp on the size of the hole they had dug for themselves, nor any serious plan to get out of it. In retrospect, the comparison seems unfair. Rae was a flinty-eyed fiscal conservative compared to this bunch.

At a time when ratings agencies are threatening to downgrade Ontario’s debt — again — amid serious concerns about the province’s ability to attract and retain investment, the policy direction advocated by the province’s government is to spend more, tax more, and borrow more. The deficit, far from declining, is projected to increase again this year, before miraculously melting away over the succeeding three.

The province’s net debt, at $289 billion already nearly double what it was when the Liberals took power, is projected to grow by another 18 per cent — $48 billion — over the next three years; debt service costs, even at today’s historically low interest rates, are projected to climb by a third. The debt-to-GDP ratio will hit 42 per cent this year, up from 28 per cent a decade ago.

What is the government doing about this gathering fiscal calamity? Once, long ago, under a government the current premier, Kathleen Wynne, insists she had no part of — the government of Dalton McGuinty, her immediate predecessor — the province made a pass at restraining spending. Program spending was held constant for two years running (can you believe it: two years!) But that has since been abandoned. Spending is now running more than $4 billion over the track laid out by the economist Don Drummond, whose 2012 report the government claims to be following. (80 per cent of his recommendations, the budget claims, have been implemented! Just none of the main ones!)

At roughly 17 per cent of GDP, the Liberals aren’t just spending more than the Conservative government that preceded them (average: 13.4 per cent) or even the free-spending Liberal government of David Peterson (14 per cent). They’re spending more than Rae’s government (16.4 per cent). Measured in real dollars per citizen, the Wynne Liberals are now spending one-third more than the Mike Harris Tories, one-quarter more than the Rae New Democrats, and nearly 50 per cent more than the Peterson Liberals.

And that’s just the current numbers. The budget also outlines a 10-year, $29 billion spending spree — sorry, a “bold new plan” — on transit and transportation projects. I say outline, because the government has barely begun to fill in the details, notably how it is going to pay for it. Roughly half of the “dedicated funding” assigned to it would come from earmarking existing taxes — which simply shifts the revenue problem onto the programs those taxes are currently paying for. Another tenth or so is supposed to come from “asset optimization,” based on recommendations that have yet to be made by a blue-ribbon panel that has barely been struck. A further five per cent is from tax increases — sorry, “targeted revenue measures.” And the rest, fully one-third of it, they’ll either borrow or extract (they hope) from the feds.

Much of the budget is in fact given over to complaining how short-changed the province is by Ottawa, which takes some work given federal transfers are more than three per cent of GDP annually — twice what they were when Harris was balancing the budget. The province is in no meaningful sense short of funds: though it has elected to raise taxes on incomes above $150,000, the revenue yield, even allowing for the government’s inevitable overstatement, is negligible: less than one-half of one per cent of provincial revenues. As with so much else in the budget, it’s just for show.

And the show is: NDP voters, come on over! Whatever glancing references there may be to the need to make “every dollar count,” the overall message is one of primitive Keynesian-style stimulus (“now is the time,” the budget claims, to spend big — five years into a recovery), mixed with 1970s-style industrial strategy, including a $2.5 billion “Jobs and Prosperity” fund to bribe companies to stay in Ontario even as a dozen other measures in the budget are screaming at them to leave.
There’s a lot of that sort of self-contradictory, mutually cancelling stuff in this: a “regional development” fund for every region; a program to subsidize businesses to conserve on energy and another one to subsidize them to consume it (Confused? The province will send “Roving Energy Managers” around to help you distinguish between them).

And, of course, there is the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, a vast new scheme to appropriate $3.5 billion a year out of working people’s pockets — $100 a month for someone earning $70,000 a year — and invest it on their behalf, whose merits deserve a separate column.

Will it work? (I mean politically: did you think I was talking about the economy?) We shall see. But if I were Tim Hudak, the Conservative leader, watching the two other parties duking it out over who can tax, spend, and borrow the most, I’d be smiling today.

TORONTO — The Ontario government expects to take in $118.9 billion and spend $130.4 billion, meaning it’ll have a deficit of $11.5 billion. Add a billion-dollar “reserve” and the bottom line is Ontario’s forecast budget deficit is $12.5 billion, the finance ministry says.

A year ago, the 2014 deficit was projected to be $10.1 billion, so the province’s accounts are worse than they were supposed to be by now. The government expects to spend $900 million less this year than it anticipated, but its projected revenues have fallen even further. The difference is mostly in lower tax revenues because the economy isn’t as strong as anticipated.

But the future is rosy, the government says. The world economy is picking up, exports to the United States should increase, and within a few years everything will be fine. The province is on target to balance the budget as scheduled in 2017, even if the climb to get there is becoming steeper and steeper. The last year before that, the forecast calls for a $5.3-billion deficit — which goes poof as of 2017. This is partly done by cutting an anticipated $3 billion from programs that aren’t health, education or social services.

The deeper deficit does two things. It pays for a number of plans and projects that are meant to entice the NDP to support the budget (or draw in NDP voters if the party votes the government down and there’s an election). And it helps TO stimulate an economy that the government acknowledges is weaker than it was expected to be by now — not something the government is making a fuss about doing.

By the end of this year, the government expects its total debt to be $310.5 billion, up $15 billion from the end of the year just past. That’s roughly 40 per cent of the province’s gross domestic product, a proportion that’s risen pretty steadily from 13 per cent back in 1990.

Budget books lay on the floor as Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa delivers the 2014 Ontario budget at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

New taxes

Living up to a promise Premier Kathleen Wynne has made repeatedly, the budget doesn’t propose to raise income taxes on low- or middle-income Ontarians. But if you make more than $150,000 (which makes you part of the “two per cent” in Ontario), the budget will raise your income taxes. The Liberals propose to increase taxes on income over $150,000 from 11.16 per cent to 12.16 per cent, and also to lower the threshold where the top tax rate of 13.16 per cent kicks in, to $220,000 from $514,090. In practice, the average top earner will pay $5,500 more in income taxes, the Liberals say.

Those hikes are supposed to bring in $635 million more in 2014.

The budget also proposes to raise taxes on airplane fuel (making air travel more expensive) by one cent per litre per year. That’s worth $25 million this year and would rise to $65 million by 2016. Cutting larger companies out of a tax-credit program that’s supposed to help small businesses but that any corporation can use would bring in another $40 million.

And the government is hiking tobacco taxes immediately to raise $140 million this year.

In all, tax increases add up to $900 million in 2014.

Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak smiles before the 2014 budget is delivered at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

Transportation projects

These are the main destination for that new money. Transit and transportation, particularly in Toronto, have been Wynne’s priority (at least in her rhetoric) and she has promised to spend $29 billion over 10 years on subways, busways and light rail in cities, and on new highways and freight lines in rural Ontario. Fifteen billion is to be spent on greater Toronto, $13.9 billion on the rest of the province.

In addition to the new taxes, the Liberals would find the $2.9 billion a year by dedicating money they already collect by taxing gasoline, by selling assets such as LCBO headquarters and shares in General Motors, and by “sweating the income statements” of Crown corporations.

Everyone agrees, at least in public, that Ontario has a desperate transportation problem. The Liberals’ plan is less ambitious than Wynne promised when she was seeking her party leadership a little over a year ago.

The Tories say they’d create a $2-billion-a-year fund called the Ontario Transportation Trust, filled with proceeds from selling assets and money saved by laying off government workers.

The New Democrats say they’d free up cities’ money for transit projects by taking over half the operating costs of transit agencies like the TTC, OC Transpo and Transit Windsor.

Fretting over a long-term outlook that shows Ontario’s economy stagnating as workers age into retirement and demand shrinks, the Liberals plan some significant changes to the way we save for retirement. The idea is that having a little less money to spend now will translate into retirees with a lot more money to spend later, which will be positive in the end. They’re very direct about what they’re doing and why: Ontarians aren’t collectively saving enough for retirement, so the government will have to force it.

The Liberals propose to supplement the federal Canada Pension Plan, which maxes out at $12,500 a year and which the federal Conservatives have refused to talk about expanding, with an Ontario-based one. There are a lot of details still to be worked out, including such basic things as when the plan would start collecting money and how old you’d have to be to qualify for benefits. But in concept, you’d have to pay into it to get benefits out, so current retirees wouldn’t be affected either way. Participants would have to pay in 1.9 per cent of their earnings — an amount matched by their employers — and people with existing workplace pensions would be exempt.

It would cover three million Ontarians, the government says.

For top earners (people making $90,000 a year or more), the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan would more than equal their Canada Pension Plan income, maxing out payments at $12,815. People who make less would pay in less and collect less.

The Liberals also promise “pooled registered pension plans” (or PRPPs), a sort of group retirement savings plan aimed at workers who don’t have pensions sponsored by their employers but want to pool their savings on their own.

The Tories say the Ontario economy couldn’t take the short-term hit from the new contributions both workers and employers would have to make. They call forced retirement savings a job-killer.

The idea that Ontarians need better-funded retirements is largely cribbed from the NDP, at least in concept, though the details of how to do it are the Liberals’ alone.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, is congratulated by Premier Kathleen Wynne following his 2014 budget speech at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

Business subsidies

The Liberals want to spend $250 million a year for 10 years on “jobs and prosperity,” which is code for grants to businesses that want to expand operations in Ontario or that otherwise might move elsewhere. The primary target is high-tech employers offering well-paid knowledge jobs creating products that can be sold globally. Wynne has already reached “partnership” agreements with Cisco Canada and OpenText that involve the government’s adding hundreds of millions of dollars to their own corporate plans to spend billions on hiring people. She wants to make this a regular part of government policy.

The Progressive Conservatives call this “corporate welfare” and are against it.

The NDP want a broader tax-credit arrangement that would benefit more companies.

Community Services Minister Ted McMeekin promised in mid-April that the budget would include plans to spend $270 million a year for three years on help for people with developmental delays and disorders, such as autism, raising total spending on such programs to $2 billion a year. Children who can benefit from expensive therapies and adults who need residential care sit on waiting lists, sometimes for years, and occasionally desperate parents drop adult children they can’t care for off at hospitals or even government offices.

The goal is to clear the waiting lists entirely.

The Progressive Conservatives haven’t made an issue of it either way.

The New Democrats have supported this move, complaining only that it might not move fast enough.

Fulfilling a promise made two elections ago, the Liberals promise to start funding one round of IVF treatment for infertile couples. The procedure can cost $10,000 and people who pay for it privately often get multiple embryos implanted to maximize the chances of success, though it also increases the chance of riskier pregnancies with twins and triplets.

The details of the program are still to be worked out, though it’s expected to cost $50 million. Some of that might be made back by reducing the need for medical treatment for complicated pregnancies and births.

The Progressive Conservatives have been silent on the idea.

The NDP is broadly in favour of funding IVF treatment.

New and renovated schools

In addition to the transportation projects, the government promises to spend $11 billion over 10 years building new schools, renovating old ones and adding to some to consolidate small schools into bigger ones. This is a less impressive figure than it sounds, though: last year’s budget promised to spend $3.9 billion over three years on the same thing, so the new plan means the money would keep coming, but not as fast in the following years.

Budget 2014, tabled in the legislature by Finance Minister Charles Sousa on Thursday, aspires to keep the Liberal government on its path to a balanced budget in 2017-18 with a series of revenue and expense projections that, should they come to pass given current plans, would border on the miraculous.

The deficit for this fiscal year is now forecast at $12.5-billion, a jump of $2.4-billion from the amount predicted in the 2013 Budget, and the 2015-16 deficit figure is now $8.9-billion, up from the $7.2-billion forecast just last year. That’s two consecutive years where the Liberals expect to significantly miss their deficit targets, adding extra billions onto the debt — and yet the deficit remains scheduled to evaporate over the two years following. It would, the budget says, drop to $5.3-billion in 2016-17 and then be eliminated entirely by 2017-18.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, takes a sip of water while delivering the 2014 budget and is applauded by Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen’s Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

For some perspective on the likelihood of that happening, consider that the actual Ontario deficit in 2010-11 was $14-billion. Based on this year’s figures, the annual deficit has now been reduced by $1.5-billion in total over the four years since, or by less than $400-million per year. But for the two years beginning in 2016-17, it will have to drop at more than ten times that rate: almost $4.5-billion per year. This would be a remarkable feat on its own, but all the more so because Ms. Wynne has shown no appetite for the type of harsh austerity measures that would be required to reduce spending by that amount in that time frame.

How, specifically, would the government achieve those out-year targets? Hard to say. The Liberals say there is no money for additional public-sector compensation, but the budget vows to “respect the collective bargaining process” in upcoming talks with major unions — a sharp departure from the last McGuinty budget that vowed to legislate wage freezes on public-sector workers. Yes, there is talk of “asset optimization” and “revenue integrity” and other such buzzwords, but this is a budget that expects annual interest payments on government debt to climb by $4-billion between now and 2017. Despite that considerable additional cost, the government says it will still achieve balance thanks to total program spending that will be at 2014 levels — $119.4-billion — in 2017. Such cost containment would be nothing short of heroic. (The government also projects a sharp jump in revenues beginning in 2016, which isn’t really a surprise since every government thinks it will make a lot more money years from now than it does today.)

Because these numbers don’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny, this is a budget that attempts to distract from them. It is built around two major items, a provincial pension plan and a transit-funding initiative, that the Liberals hope will be enough to change the conversation away from the fact that their steady-hand-on-the-tiller deficit-reduction plan has now crashed on the shoals. Meanwhile, the Liberals would like you to know that any complaints about their fiscal management should be directed to those cold-hearted federal Tories. The 2014 Budget includes an entire chapter called “Federal Underfunding of Ontarians,” and Mr. Sousa missed no opportunity on Thursday to whinge about the poor treatment of the province at the hands of Ottawa.

Meanwhile, the proposed pension plan, which would be mandatory for anyone without a “comparable” workplace pension, will place new costs on employers regardless of their profitability, while the transit proposal, which Ms. Wynne once insisted would be funded by essential new revenue tools, instead mostly relies on the repurposing of existing revenues — and has a $10-billion hole that would be filled with as-yet-unpromised federal contributions and more than $7-billion in possible new debt. To be clear: that’s new debt that hasn’t even been factored in yet to the almost $300-billion in debt the government has already amassed.

Where once Ms. Wynne was insistent that she would take on the tough sell of new taxes for transit, the budget instead puts all the burden on those with high incomes — defined as people earning more than $150,000 annually — as well as smokers, air travellers, and large corporations that will no longer qualify for certain tax credits. Even here, though, the government’s math is highly fuzzy. The budget predicts $635-million in new revenues from personal income tax changes that raise rates by one percentage point for the top-earning 2% of filers. Finance officials confirmed, however, that the revenue estimation assumes zero response from the affected taxpayers. This is completely at odds with research on the subject that says new taxes on high-income earners typically generate about half the expected revenue because those taxpayers take measures to avoid paying the higher rates. Right there, that’s an annual shortfall of more than $300-million from what the government has booked, before it has even begun collecting the new taxes.

Of course, none of this matters if both opposition parties at Queen’s Park choose to vote against the budget plan and send the province into an election. PC leader Tim Hudak, to the surprise of no one, said his party will vote against it. NDP leader Andrea Horwath, to the surprise of everyone, didn’t attend the budget proceedings on Thursday and said she would render her verdict on Friday morning.

This is a budget that was entirely designed to secure Ms. Horwath’s support. She shouldn’t have a hard time finding reasons to reject it.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/liberals-adding-2-4-billion-to-ontarios-deficit-in-2014-budget/feed0Charles Sousathenationalpost1Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, right, takes a sip of water while delivering the 2014 budget and is applauded by Premier Kathleen Wynne at Queen's Park in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)Conservative leader Tim Hudak listens to Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, not shown deliver the 2014 budget next at Queen's Park in Toronto4. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette) NDP leader Andrea Horwath, right, and Gilles Bisson, left, read the 2014 Ontario budget as Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, not shown delivers the 2014 budget at Queen's Park in Toronto on Thursday, May 1, 2014.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette For the first time since 1976, our Canada includes Quebechttp://o.canada.com/news/for-the-first-time-since-1976-our-canada-includes-quebec
http://o.canada.com/news/for-the-first-time-since-1976-our-canada-includes-quebec#respondTue, 08 Apr 2014 16:31:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=424326]]>It posed the most serious threat to Canadian unity since the 1995 referendum, and was arguably the most important provincial election this country has seen since Rene Levesque first won power in Quebec in 1976. And guess what, Canada? It ended well for you — very well indeed.

The country in which we woke up today is different from the one in which we went to sleep just 48 hours ago. For in decisively turning thumbs-down on Pauline Marois, who lost her own seat, Quebecers rejected both the prospect of another referendum on separation, the very shadow of which was enough to push the PQ’s campaign into the ditch, and the mean-spirited and xenophobic “charter of Quebec values.” This establishes, powerfully and in some respects for the first time, that Canada is a pluralistic, socially progressive country, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Pacific Ocean.

Of course Quebecers will continue to debate identity and language. The Couillard government will advance institutional secularity, in its own moderate way, which it should. But it will be a rash politician indeed who pokes his or her head above the parapet in future to advocate for institutional bigotry, and the manufactured fear of “the other,” as a means of uniting francophone Quebecers under a separatist banner.

It’s difficult to overstate the extent of the catastrophe this has been for the Parti Quebecois. Not only has it lost power after just 18 months, the shortest term of any Quebec government ever, and been reduced to 30 seats, from the 54 it held at dissolution. But it now finds itself without a viable reason for its own existence. Where does a separatist party go, once separatism is off the table? And who has the stature internally to lead it?

The three most viable leadership prospects are deemed to be Pierre Karl Peladeau, Jean-Francois Lisee, and Bernard Drainville. Peladeau, with his raised-fist cris-de-coeur for independence on March 9, cost them all the ball game; Lisee was the strategic mastermind behind the deliberate use of identity politics as a separatist wedge; and Drainville the frontman for the Marois charter itself. Peladeau and Lisee have the capacity to split the PQ in two, along ideological, right-left lines. At the very least the party faces a protracted period of soul-searching and internal foment. How it recovers from this moment, if at all, is unclear.

For Canada, that means the separatist threat is gone — if not for all time, then certainly in our time. Monday the party took barely a quarter of the popular vote, its worst result since 1970. In four years its elderly, baby-boom
cohorts will be that much older, Quebec’s population will be that much more diverse and cosmopolitan, and time marches on. Young and forty-something Quebecers, like the rest of us, live in a smartphone culture, which is Kryptonite to ethnic nationalism.

Federally the immediate political beneficiary is New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair, who no longer faces a wolf at the door in the form of divided loyalties among his soft-nationalist Quebec supporters. The diminution of the separatist threat also reduces one of the major obstacles to NDP progress in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and the West, namely the party’s Sherbrooke Declaration, espousing 50-per-cent-plus-one as adequate in a referendum to kick off negotiations on separation. That policy now becomes a vestigial limb.

For Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the result is also good news; he dodges the bullet that threatened to expose his government’s deep vulnerability in Quebec, where it holds just five seats. He can now work with an avowedly federalist premier who wants to solve problems and foster economic growth, rather than pick fights.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, is proven right in his bold contention last summer that Quebecers would ultimately reject the jingoism of Marois’ charter. Trudeau won plaudits then for his stance, in contrast with Mulcair’s more cautious approach (though he came out strongly against the values charter eventually) and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s silence. Trudeau deserved those plaudits. The fact is though, that he has now de facto been deprived of a field, national unity crisis management, in which he and the federal Liberals had a clear competitive advantage. How they address this gap remains to be seen.

But beyond all that, there’s this: In the last Ontario election, Tory leader Tim Hudak lost the thread with labour policies that were perceived to be anti-immigrant. In the last Alberta election, Danielle Smith’s Wildrose failed partly because of anti-gay remarks by some of her candidates. Now this. It seems Canadians are indeed devoted to their charter of values, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Our tradition of pluralism, 32 years later, is strong and getting stronger. And that is something the entire country — which today, perhaps for the first time since 1976, unequivocally includes Quebec — can celebrate.